Erasmus Darwin's Deistic Dissent and Didactic Epic Poetry

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Erasmus Darwin’s Deistic Dissent and Didactic Epic Poetry:

Promoting Science Education to a Mixed Audience Under the Banner of Tolerance

Kirsten Anne Martin

A thesis submitted to the Graduate Program in English Language and Literature

in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Queen’s University

Kingston, Ontario, Canada

July 2012

Erasmus Darwin’s task as a Deistic Dissenter poet who wished to promote science education to a mixed audience was complex. There was mainstream concern over what Deists and Dissenters actually believed about God, their involvement in science, and, especially, how their published works, whatever the subject, might affect public morality and politics. I argue that Darwin’s poetry is primarily in the genre of Lucretian didactic epic but that it also involves elements of other written traditions (literary and non-literary). I focus on English didactic poetry, the theological written traditions of Dissent and Deism, and a particular tradition of erotic satire. The genre of Lucretian didactic epic and the tradition of English didactic poetry are non-identical. In

Darwin’s Lucretian didactic epic, resemblances to such poems as Pope’s Essay on Man challenge ideas about what kind of narrative a didactic poem in the English language can deliver.

Techniques from the theological written traditions of Dissent and Deism reflect Darwin’s affiliations, signal that science education fits within a larger debate about intellectual freedom, and promote tolerance for differences of opinion about nature. Mimicry of a particular tradition of erotic satire helps to downplay the address to a mixed audience while satirising some common misconceptions about poetry, botany, and women in the period. Darwin’s poetry challenges ideas about what people from his community of belief meant to communicate or transmit by writing for the general public, what the general public was entitled to learn, and what poetry was able to teach. Perhaps Darwin’s biggest modification of Lucretian didactic epic was that he did not tell his readers exactly what to think, but how.

Acknowledgements

I owe a major debt of gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Christopher Fanning. You’ve

always responded to my work with interest, encouragement, judicious criticism, and great

suggestions. You’ve also helped me to appreciate the finer things in life, such as the shoe phone.

Thanks for everything. To my second reader, Dr. John Pierce: your commentary on the draft was

invaluable. To the following members of staff at Queen’s University, Monica Corbett and Rose

Silva (School of Graduate Studies), Kathy Goodfriend and Sherrill Barr (Department of English),

and Terry Smith (Department of Classics): each of you responded to my (many!) questions with patience and understanding.

Graduate school is more of a journey than any specific place. I’ve had the good fortune to meet some wonderful people everywhere that I’ve gone. I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge a few in particular. Thank you to Adam J. Perkins, Curator of Scientific

Manuscripts at Cambridge University Library, for giving me full access to Erasmus Darwin’s early writings during my research trip in 2008. The reading gave me the insights that I needed.

The tangible result was my paper for the CSECS conference later that year, “‘As the Author

Believes’: The Poet’s Progress and Erasmus Darwin.” Thank you to Dr. James Allard (Brock

University), chair of the special session on Erasmus Darwin’s writings at the NASSR conference in 2006. I presented my first conference paper, “The Relationship between Erasmus Darwin’s

‘The Loves of the Plants’ of 1789 and Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura [On the Nature of Things],”

which became the basis of this dissertation. You gave me courage. Thank you to Dr. Robert

Merrett (University of Alberta). You helped me to figure out my academic path in more ways

than one. You introduced me to Darwin’s poems (in your graduate seminar on nature writing).

iii

The poems showed me what kinds of ideas I wanted to tackle. The person behind the syllabus inspired me to go out and do it. You made me want to become a professor.

To my parents, Dick and Ann: you encouraged me to dream, plan, and act. When I was growing up, you taught me that a dream will only ever be a dream unless a person sets a series of achievable goals and pursues each goal actively. You instilled in me fierce determination and a strong work ethic. At this stage, I know that a dream will only ever be a dream unless a person has backup, too. Thank you for everything: moral support and funds, unconditional love and patience. . . The list goes on. The heart of the matter is that I couldn’t have done this without you. To my sister Erin: thanks for cheering me on and making me smile. Keep the videos of kittens coming! To friends Cat, Chuck, Karen, Paul, Raechel, and Ritchie: your friendship is a great blessing. Last but not least, I’d like to pay tribute to the late Adam Lees. Adam took an interest in just about everyone and everything. That included a perpetually preoccupied PhD student and her work. His conversations with me were a gift. I’ll always remember his generosity of spirit – and I’ll work on my own.

This thesis is dedicated to my mother, Ann, and to the memory of my maternal grandmother, Margaret, for reading to me (and so much more)

Contents

Chapter 1

Introduction...... 1

Chapter 2

Darwin’s Beliefs and Milieu...... 30

Chapter 3:

Questions Concerning Darwin’s Didacticism and Genre...... 79

Chapter 4:

Reviving and Revising Lucretian Didactic Epic:

One Genre, Two Problems, Plural Traditions...... 129

Chapter 5

Reading Darwin’s Dissenting Didactic Epics...... 173

Chapter 6

Conclusion...... 254

Bibliography...... 258

Appendix 1: Use of Copyright Materials...... 268

Chapter 1

Introduction

Preamble

In the first section of this introduction, I plot out the original publication history of

Darwin’s poems The Botanic Garden (which is comprised of Part I: “The Economy of

Vegetation” and Part II: “The Loves of the Plants”) and The Temple of Nature, and I discuss some of the issues that this raises for reading, interpreting, and understanding them. In the dissertation, I typically refer to The Loves of the Plants, The Economy of Vegetation, and The

Temple of Nature more or less as if they are three individual poems but with attention to the ways in which each of them affects the shape or sense of the next, the increased complexity of goals and subject matter from one to the other, and the overarching lesson or message of the three as a set. Because italicising all three of the titles is unusual, it is best to justify this early on.

I do that with reference to the order in which they were published and how they were styled, also taking into account the lack of critical consensus on the subject of using italics or quotation marks for the titles. In the end, while my notation is unusual, treating the texts as if they are independent is not, and probing into their similarities has sometimes been done by others. I simply probe deeper into that particular vein of criticism.

The second section provides my argument in synopsis, and the third section presents summaries of the chapters and conclusion. In the synopsis and summaries, I establish the basic context in which I assert and articulate my position within the field of Darwin criticism. There is much literary criticism of Darwin’s poetry. Unfortunately, critics tend not to engage with that body of work. Because the interpenetration of ideas is rarer than it could be, an argument can seem novel when, in fact, it is not. With that in mind, I provide an overview of the criticism that

is relevant to determining how best to think about Darwin’s beliefs – which is a key issue in the

study of Darwin’s poetry, and my response to which is central to my project – in Chapter Two.

Other relevant bodies of criticism (literary and extra-literary) and kinds of commentary (e.g.,

correspondence, parodies) appear in subsequent chapters where and as they are appropriate to the

development of my argument. My close reading of the poems themselves is deferred to the fifth

chapter. The work that I do in the preceding chapters redresses key issues in Darwin criticism,

and also foregrounds and sheds additional light on the close reading.

Original Publication History of the Texts

For me to refer without explanation to The Loves of the Plants (1789), The Economy of

Vegetation (1792), and The Temple of Nature (1803) as if they are three different but related poems would be very misleading. In the strictest sense, Darwin produced two long published poems: One is The Botanic Garden, which is made up of two parts, Part I: “The Economy of

Vegetation” and Part II: “The Loves of the Plants.” Both parts have four cantos in rhymed

couplets, philosophic footnotes, and additional notes following the end of the fourth canto. Part

II also has a preface on Linnaean botany, a proem on the verse, and three prose interludes, which

represent a Poet and a Bookseller in conversation. The other published poem is The Temple of

Nature (1803), which has a preface about the poem, four cantos, philosophic footnotes, and

additional notes. I discuss the cantos, notes, prefaces, proem, and interludes in detail in the fifth

chapter. For now, here is a typical example of Darwin’s basic format of verse-with-notes, which

I take from Part II:

Descend, ye hovering Sylphs! aerial Quires,

And sweep with little hands your silver lyres;

With fairy footsteps print your grassy rings,

Ye Gnomes! accordant to the tinkling strings;

While in soft notes I tune to oaten reed

Gay hopes, and amorous sorrows of the mead. –

From giant Oaks, that wave their branches dark,

To the dwarf Moss, that clings upon their bark,

What Beaux and Beauties crowd the gaudy groves,

And woo and win their vegetable Loves . . .

Vegetable Loves. l. 10. Linneus [sic], the celebrated Swedish naturalist, has

demonstrated, that all flowers contain families of males or females, or both; and on their

marriages has constructed his invaluable system of Botany.1

Despite the ostensibly absolute division between verse and note, all four cantos of Part II are

based upon Linnaeus’ system of botany – more specifically, his sexual metaphor of the male and

female parts of fructification in plants (stamens and pistils, respectively) – and also precipitate

the discussion in the notes in many instances. Similarly, in Part I and The Temple of Nature, the

cantos and notes work in concert.

Darwin’s poetry always seems to put me in mind of my undergraduate biology class: not

only the lecture on Linnaeus as the father of botany, whose sexual metaphor has been disproved

but whose taxonomy remains, but also the lecture on Occam’s Razor, as the guiding principle for

all scientific study. To paraphrase, the principle is that one should accept the simplest available

explanation of a phenomenon or observation because it is probably right. While that is sound

advice for anyone working on a scientific hypothesis, I am doubtful of its applicability to textual

1 Erasmus Darwin, The Collected Writings of Erasmus Darwin, ed. Martin Priestman, vol. 2, The Botanic Garden: The Loves of the Plants (Bristol: Thoemmes Continuum, 2004), Canto 1, lines 1-10. 3

issues. Darwin’s poetry is a good case in point. I neglected to provide a date for The Botanic

Garden purposely, because this seemingly single poem was published in incomplete form before

it was published in full, with the first portion identified as Part II. We can reasonably choose to

refer to The Botanic Garden when we are discussing both I and II, but the publication history

does not support a straightforward definition of it as a single poem, in two parts, with Part I

appearing first and Part II appearing second. There was, of course, an edition that was presented

in that way. But that edition does nothing to show how people actually read Darwin’s poetry

from its first incarnation or instalment onward. Not only was The Botanic Garden not necessarily

read from beginning, to middle, to end, it was not necessarily read in any single or particular

order.

Part II was published in April 1789 (anonymously), but that was not the last time that it

appeared on its own. A second edition was published in January 1790 (identifying the author as

Darwin), and a third edition with corrections, in 1791 (also identifying the author as Darwin).2 In

June 1792 – the printed date of “1791” is incorrect (King-Hele, 257) – the third edition of The

Loves of the Plants and the first edition of “The Economy of Vegetation” were bound together

and published. Copies of The Loves of the Plants had been set aside specifically for this purpose.

Whereas The Loves of the Plants went through three separate editions, “The Economy of

Vegetation” actually appeared initially in the first edition of the complete poem, The Botanic

Garden. To focus too deliberately on “The Botanic Garden of 1792” would entail ignoring the

history of how the poem was framed for prospective readers beginning in 1789, how it was

issued, and how it was bound together only after many readers had, as it were, skipped the (so-

2 Desmond King-Hele, Erasmus Darwin: A Life of Unequalled Achievement (London: DLM, 2007), 232, 248, 253.

4 called) beginning for the (so-called) ending. By ignoring publication history in this instance, we would be ignoring the kinds of readings that were possible at given points in time. In 1789, there was only one way to read the poem, and that was to read The Loves of the Plants. In 1792, there was more than one way to read it.

Indeed, it is not common practice to refer to The Botanic Garden rather than to the parts.

But it should be noted that there is still no single prescriptive convention as to which titles should be printed in italics and which ones should be set off with quotation marks. Different critics do different things, and what they elect to do is usually idiosyncratic. Very few critics provide their rationale. Of those who do offer an explanation, there are two common practices. Some refer to

“The Loves of the Plants” and “The Economy of Vegetation” as parts of The Botanic Garden as poem. Others refer to The Loves of the Plants and “The Economy of Vegetation” as parts of The

Botanic Garden, using the italics for Part II in acknowledgement of the fact that it was published separately. Based solely on the examples that I have given above, for critics who are aware of all three texts and the need to relate them to each other sensibly, “The Loves of the Plants”/ The

Loves of the Plants and “The Economy of Vegetation” are parts of a poem, not poems unto themselves.

There is no single prescriptive convention for dating the texts. Critics have their preferred edition of whatever text they are writing about, and that is to be expected. There are, however, bound to be certain conflicts between one’s notation and one’s choice of edition: the best example is that critics who italicise The Loves of the Plants are not necessarily working with the

1789 edition. For the most part, I use the Thoemmes Continuum facsimiles of the 1792 editions of The Loves of the Plants and The Economy of Vegetation and the 1803 edition of The Temple of

Nature. (The exception is when I discuss portions of the advertisement that only appear in the

1789 edition of The Loves of the Plants.) It is effectively impossible to devise one way of referring to the texts that will apply to every edition of it both correctly and justly. To my mind, this is a matter of minimal concern so long as one is otherwise clear about which poem – or which version – one is discussing.

Almost no one who mentions the existence of the whole poem analyses it as such.

Reference to The Botanic Garden is, most often, gestural; it simply signals that there is a longer text than whichever one a person happens to be discussing. That, too, is of minimal concern.

What is noteworthy is this: almost no one who indicates that he or she is writing about a specific part of The Botanic Garden proceeds, then, to treat it as a part. Instead, they treat it as if it existed in isolation from the rest. That is not necessarily a problem to be solved. What is important to think about is why they are able to do so without producing what looks like an analysis of a chunk of a poem (beginning to middle, or middle to end). The reason is that each part has a beginning, middle, and an end of its own; that is, a narrative that does not depend on what happens beforehand or afterward. To some extent, that makes sense in terms of the publication history. If Darwin had chosen to present readers with nothing more than the concluding portion of a poem in 1789 – if he had already shown them how the poem played out in the end – they might not have been very interested in 1792 in discovering what had happened in the beginning. All critics view The Temple of Nature as separate from The Botanic Garden and a poem unto itself, but some do discuss the similarities and connections between the two. In the end, what I do is not very different. I italicise all of the titles because the texts can be read as individual poems. In my analysis, I treat them as if they are poems unto themselves (like most critics) but also as a set of closely related poems (like those critics who look into their similarities and connections). What is unique about my approach is its governing rationale that

the poems can be seen to build upon each other when they are read in the order in which they

were originally published.

As I explained earlier, The Loves of the Plants, The Economy of Vegetation, and The

Temple of Nature all have the same basic format: verse and notes. Only The Loves of the Plants and The Temple of Nature have prefaces (I discuss these prefaces in the fifth chapter). In addition, the three parts/ poems have strikingly similar titles. Taken here from the front matter of each, the titles are The Botanic Garden, Part II. Containing The Loves of the Plants, a Poem.

With Philosophical Notes, The Botanic Garden, Part I. Containing The Economy of Vegetation, a Poem. With Philosophical Notes, and The Temple of Nature; or, The Origin of Society: A

Poem. With Philosophical Notes. Every title includes the description, “A Poem. With

Philosophical Notes.” The titles of many critical editions of older works of literature – and some original works of literature – include similar information: “with notes” or “cum notis.” On

Eighteenth Century Collections Online,3 searching titles in the category of “Language and

Literature” for the phrases “with notes” and “cum notis” yields 1723 listings and 110 listings, respectively. In contrast, searching titles in the category of “Language and Literature” for the phrase “a poem with philosophical notes” (with or without punctuation) yields only six listings.

An additional search for the phrase in the front matter of texts yields five listings. All of the

listings for the phrase “a poem with philosophical notes” are editions of Darwin’s poems

(excluding The Temple of Nature, which is not in the database). The six listings under “titles” are

for editions of The Botanic Garden, Part II. Containing The Loves of the Plants, a Poem. With

3 To see all of the search results discussed in this paragraph and the next, see Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Advanced Search, “with notes,” “cum notis,” “with philosophical notes.” Accessed August 2011, May 2012. http://find.galegroup.com.proxy.queensu.ca/ecco/dispAdvSearch.do?prodId=ECCO&userGroup Name=queensulaw 7

Philosophical Notes. The five listings under “front matter” are for The Botanic Garden, Part II.

Containing The Loves of the Plants and The Botanic Garden, Part I. Containing The Economy of

Vegetation. The title for the first edition of the complete Botanic Garden includes the phrase “a

poem with philosophical notes” only once, following reference to Part II. Containing The Loves

of the Plants. It can, therefore, seem to apply only to The Loves of the Plants. In all likelihood,

that is why the first set of search results does not include The Economy of Vegetation. However,

the front matter for The Economy of Vegetation shows that it is also a poem with philosophical

notes.

Searching for “with philosophical notes” in titles under the category of “Language and

Literature” results in a few listings other than Darwin’s poems: English translations of the works

of a French author, Raymond St Maur (also cited as Nicolas-François Dupré de Saint-Maur), entitled The state of innocence: and fall of man. Described in Milton's Paradise lost. Render'd

into prose. . . . (1745) and The fall of man, or, Milton's Paradise lost. In prose. . . . (circa 1765),

both “with historical, philosophical, and explanatory notes”; Moses Browne’s Piscatory

Eclogues: An Essay to Introduce New Rules, and New Characters, into Pastoral. To which is

prefix’d, a Discourse in Defence of this Undertaking. With Practical and Philosophical Notes

(1729); and The Female Patriot: An Epistle from C-t-e M-c-y to the Reverend Dr. W-l-n on her late marriage. With Critical, Historical, and Philosophical Notes and Illustrations, which is an epistolary, satiric, poem by Richard Paul Jodrell (1779). The categories of “Science and

Technology” and “Religion and Philosophy” yield the most listings. Texts in these categories are, for example, “interspersed with philosophical and explanatory notes” (a scientific text);

“with critical, philosophical, and explanatory notes” (a religious text); and “with notes,

theological, moral, philosophical, critical, and historical” (another religious text). In summary,

both “with philosophical notes” and “with notes” or “cum notis” were used for the same kinds of

purposes in the category of language and literature: critical editions of literary works and also,

occasionally, original literary works. However, apart from listings for Darwin’s poems, the only

other original poem that advertises philosophical notes is The Female Patriot. Darwin’s use of

philosophical notes links his work with a verse satire and an essay on potential innovations in the

genre of pastoral as well as with various scientific and religious works. Whether or not he was

aware of either The Female Patriot or Piscatory Eclogues, there is a hint here of a potentially

subversive element to works of or on literature that feature philosophical notes.

The titles for The Loves of the Plants and The Economy of Vegetation – as they appear in the front matter – make reference to their status as parts of The Botanic Garden. Placement of the descriptor – “a Poem. With Philosophical Notes” – is not where it should be. Instead of describing The Botanic Garden, which is what it ought logically to do, it describes The Loves of the Plants and The Economy of Vegetation, which have already been identified as parts. Of course, for The Botanic Garden to be a particular kind of poem, The Loves of the Plants and The

Economy of Vegetation must contribute the requisite material. The oddity is interesting because

the reading order of the parts/ poems could (and did) vary; because each part/ poem has narrative

coherency on its own, i.e., does not depend on the other for resolution, which is why critics can

write about one as if it is entire to itself; and because there is progression from II to I, which

raises the question of why the so-called second part was not cast as the first instead, especially as

it was published early. I will return to this a bit later.

In The Loves of the Plants (1789) – more specifically, in the Advertisement for the

complete poem, to be titled “The Botanic Garden, etc.” – Darwin gave details as to what The

Economy of Vegetation would be about. He had, then, a preconceived idea of what it was going

to accomplish, and how it would fit with The Loves of the Plants. Darwin’s biographer, Desmond

King-Hele, has indicated that The Loves of the Plants of 1789 “seems to have delighted all its

readers, young and old, male and female” (Erasmus Darwin: A Life, 237), and that it “served as

the basis of Darwin’s pre-eminent reputation as a poet” (257). The Botanic Garden of 1792 met

with “a chorus of approval from its expectant readers” (257). As King-Hele attests, The Loves of

the Plants of 1789 was responsible for defining Darwin as a poet. It had cultivated expectations

for The Economy of Vegetation, which in turn received praise. In this instance, the parts do not

outweigh the whole, but they are significant in themselves. While Darwin was writing The

Economy of Vegetation, he also continued to revise The Loves of the Plants. In the revised editions, he attended to such issues as errata in the text, notes that he wanted to tweak, and wording here and there in the verses that he wanted to improve in some specific way. His revisions did not affect what the poem did and how it did it (i.e., change its form and purpose), and so they did not have any particular impact on The Botanic Garden. There was no reason to worry about the reception of The Economy of Vegetation on account of any small errors or insufficiencies in the 1789 version of The Loves of the Plants, which had been very well received. Darwin’s revisions are suggestive of a dedicated writer, one who would not stop working on a text until it was as perfect as he could possibly make it, but also one who considered the text that he was revising valuable in its own right.

Darwin’s readers, intended and actual, included both men and women. He had a special interest in the layman, particularly the female layman (or laywoman). He typically addresses his readers in the singular: “the reader” (Darwin, The Loves of the Plants, v); and in terms of masculine and feminine traits: “the critical reader” (92) and “the gentle reader” (vii). It is unclear if these refer to different groups of readers, critical male ones and gentle female ones, or if they

refer to a single group. Because he wrote for a mixed audience, he would surely have anticipated

a variety of approaches to The Botanic Garden. For example, one might have read the parts out-

of-order – The Loves of the Plants first, The Economy of Vegetation later. In fact, Darwin

depended upon many readers doing exactly that in 1789. If the relatively short Part II sold well,

then Part I would have (at least in theory) good market value: otherwise, he would be saved the

work of further writing. But there was another reason for selling Part II first: for many readers

whose education in any science had been limited or non-existent because of their sex or class or

both, it would provide an introduction, and in so doing give them the basic vocabulary for what

was to come. Once both of the poems were published together, returning readers had two clear

options: they could read The Economy of Vegetation and stop, or they could also re-read The

Loves of the Plants. They could also choose to read the components in reverse order, if they wanted a refresher course in botany. New readers had the chance to read the whole poem in one sitting, in any order that they liked. Of course, any of Darwin’s readers, returning or new, might have read selectively: this part or that, this bit or that; a verse here, a footnote there. They had the further option of dipping into any of his footnoted sources. He represented The Loves of the

Plants as a little diversion while he worked on The Economy of Vegetation. In my view, his representation of The Loves of the Plants as entertainment downplayed its educative purpose. He also expressed his intention to provide an introduction to a relatively simple science of public interest, botany. One of the triumphs of The Loves of the Plants was making botany more easily approachable, friendlier, and simpler. His imagined readership was purposely left ambiguous, and this gave his actual readers leeway to think of themselves as if they were equals to Darwin, even though they would not have been treated as such in their daily lives, and even though they would not have received the same level of education. The publication order helped with the issue

11 of unequal education: by the time The Economy of Vegetation was published, all of his returning readers would be ready for it. I discuss Darwin’s imagined reader(s) in the fifth chapter, in connection with Lucretian didactic epic as teaching poetry and erotic satire’s representation of the readers of botanical texts as loose women and effeminate men.

When The Economy of Vegetation was finally published, it took its place as Part I of The

Botanic Garden, and The Loves of the Plants, as Part II. The effect on The Loves of the Plants was subordination. As Part II, it no longer necessarily served the purpose of teaching botany. To some extent, it no longer had to do that, because those who had read it in one of its three iterations had learned the lesson. Ostensibly, it became what it was always supposed to be, a little diversion tacked onto the end of the more substantial and significant work. The Economy of

Vegetation represents the origins of the universe and human life – it promotes the study of natural philosophy, of which botany is but one example. Still, The Loves of the Plants retains some of its original skill of misdirection after all, shifting attention back to vignettes of plant life and love, and ending the poem on a light note.

The Temple of Nature (1803) was published posthumously. It is not styled as a part or continuation of Darwin’s earlier work, which is why critics typically refer to it as a distinct poem, which may or may not have connections with his previous poems. I equivocate slightly.

As with The Loves of the Plants and The Economy of Vegetation, we can – and should – consider

The Temple of Nature on its own terms. But there are deep connections between the three, which we should also consider. The title page and format show us that The Temple of Nature is another poem with philosophical notes. The title page also identifies Darwin as the author of The Botanic

Garden, trading on his fame (positive and negative), and possibly suggesting that The Botanic

Garden and The Temple of Nature are similar kinds of work. It may well be that what readers

wanted from The Economy of Vegetation was some appreciable similarity to The Loves of the

Plants (and they got it). In 1803, Darwin’s format was familiar, and his views were more or less

common knowledge. He could count on readers to read between the lines of his rhymed couplets

and philosophic notes. I see The Temple of Nature as picking up where The Economy of

Vegetation left off, and The Loves of the Plants before it. Like them, it has narrative coherency

on its own, but reading it in relation to them shows a progression. As The Economy of Vegetation

subordinates The Loves of the Plants, so The Temple of Nature subordinates The Economy of

Vegetation. This time, however, there is no little diversion at the end of the poem.

The Temple of Nature was a failure in terms of public response. As literary critic James

Venable Logan surmises, the novelty of Darwin’s style had worn off, “the tide of public taste had

changed,” and “the leaven of Lyrical Ballads had begun to work.”4 My view is generally in line with this judgment, but I would add that the tide of public opinion changed in large part because of Darwin and his poems. The most vocal readers of the poems reacted against their author’s presumed atheism and atheistic poetic intent. That group included Coleridge and Wordsworth, whose fame as poets would subsequently eclipse that of Darwin. (See Chapter 2 for more on

Coleridge and Wordsworth.) A poet would probably prefer to inspire a devoted following of imitators. What we must not forget or undervalue, however, is that Darwin had been famous enough – and his poetry, compelling enough – to influence two of our most celebrated poets’ vision for the future of poetry. Both Coleridge and Wordsworth were interested in Darwin’s incorporation of scientific material into his poetry.

The final issue of concern that I must raise is the most imperative. There is no single

prescriptive convention as to the genre(s) of Darwin’s poems. Critics have classified the poems

4 James Venable Logan, The Poetry and Aesthetics of Erasmus Darwin (New York: Octagon, 1972), 18. 13 as epics and mock-epics and have also described them more generally as scientific poems or didactic poems. The common thread is that Darwin’s didacticism was too strong to befit either epic or mock-epic. Darwin’s critics have accepted that didacticism is merely modal and must be subordinated to the aims of one’s genre. It is important to note here that Darwin’s poetry has nonetheless inspired intense critical interest, particularly in the last five years. It is imperative to the continued progress of Darwin criticism that we reach a consensus on the related issues of his didacticism and genre.

In each of the titles for The Loves of the Plants, The Economy of Vegetation, and The

Temple of Nature, there is an extra period between “poem” and “with philosophical notes.” That is not, in and of itself, unusual: components of titles were often broken up in this way, e.g., The

Female Patriot: An Epistle . . . . With. It is, however, very apparent in the case of Darwin’s poems, because there is never any extra information between “poem” and “philosophical notes.”

In the context of what these texts are – “poems” – what they have – “philosophical notes” – and the unusualness of that combination, might the period have served to sever or to conceal a connection between these two modes of expression? As early as 1789, Darwin styled his work,

“A Poem. With Philosophical Notes.” The description reads in two interesting and related ways: dismissively and defensively. In the dismissive reading, the poem is not affected by the philosophical notes: it is as if they are simply tacked on, a matter of no concern, superfluous. In the defensive reading, the extra period reads as insistence: “This is a Poem.” In Darwin’s time, there were perceptions that overt didacticism could damage the integrity of a poem. It was not always clear if the integrity at stake was aesthetic, structural, or moral. In the text if not also in the titles of Darwin’s poems, he ostensibly constrains versifying and philosophising to separate quarters, but in actuality he weaves them into a coherent whole.

Synopsis

In this dissertation, my basic argument is that Darwin’s poetry is in the genre of Lucretian

didactic epic. It is, however, a modified form of Lucretian didactic epic. In addition to engaging

with the original tradition of epic, it engages with eighteenth-century English traditions of

writing. It is revisionary in effect, bringing Lucretian didactic epic to bear on the neo-Augustan

poetic. Darwin modified features of Lucretian didactic epic by enlisting elements from other

traditions of writing (literary and non-literary). His use of Lucretian didactic epic and his

modifications of it are both essential to his unstated aims: challenging ideas about what poetry

should be allowed to teach, what people from his community of belief set out to accomplish by

writing for the general public, and what the general public was entitled to learn – particularly,

what women were entitled to learn. While his stated aims in the poems are relatively

uncontroversial, negative responses to his poetry from 1797 onward show that his critics were

aware that there was a difference between what he said he was doing and what he was trying to

accomplish, and that they had a fair idea of his real aims. Perhaps Darwin’s biggest modification

of Lucretian didactic epic was that he did not tell his readers exactly what to think. He taught

them how to think in the same terms that revealed his affiliations, but that left judgment of his

representation of nature to their discretion.

Darwin was a Deistic Dissenter. His poetry reflects his background. His poetry also links

science and women’s education with fuller legal freedom and tolerance for heterodox

Christianity indirectly. Darwin’s task, as a Deistic Dissenter poet who was promoting science and women’s education, was to allay pre-existing concerns over what Deists and Dissenters

believed, their involvement in science, and how their beliefs and their science would influence

public morality and English politics. Because he was promoting the study of the sexual system of

15 botany by a mixed audience, he had more specifically to allay pre-existing concerns over corruption of the presumably weaker sex, and how this would affect morality and politics.

I consider the genre of Lucretian didactic epic in connection with the eighteenth-century written traditions that would have been the most relevant to Darwin’s task and aims. These are as follows: the poetic tradition of English didactic poetry (e.g., Pope’s Essay on Man, which has notes), because he was challenging ideas about what didactic poetry could do; the non-literary written traditions of Dissent and Deism, in order to acknowledge and address his affiliations and locate science and women’s education within a larger debate (indirectly); and a particular tradition of erotic satire (which I view as a kind of didactic poetry, except that some texts are in prose, not verse), for the purpose of downplaying or even confusing his address to female readers, but also satirising common misconceptions about poetry, botany, and women. I am concerned with the aspects of the genre and traditions with which Darwin engaged and how they served him.

Didactic epic supplied Darwin with a general model and a generic precedent for his most basic aim: teaching science through poetry. It gave him a literary source with which to chip away at the accepted purposes of didactic poetry in eighteenth-century England. In other words, it enabled him to give literary – and epic – importance to the pursuit of science, by women as well as men, because this pursuit had tremendous social significance. Darwin’s critics tend to fixate on his use of the phrase “under the banner of science” and suppose that he somehow diminished rather than enlarged poetry’s significance by importing natural philosophy into it. A common error is nonetheless an error, and all the more in need of correction. Darwin was not simply stuffing scientific trivia into poetry. He was extending poetry’s purview and reach, allowing it to teach and perhaps influence social reform. Of related importance, didactic epic enabled him to

16 reach readers who would not be accessible through an expressly scientific genre. That he taught those readers science through poetry should not be misconstrued as solely, or even primarily, a contribution to science. History shows us that Darwin was celebrated for his contribution, as a poet, to literature – and for almost a decade.

Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura – as a poem that was well known in the eighteenth century – also gave him some useful reference points, ways of making his readers think about quite specific issues without his having to spell them out and put himself in jeopardy. One issue was

Lucretius’ “virtual atheism,”5 versus Darwin’s Deism and active membership in some well known Dissenter circles (most pertinent of which was that of his London publisher, Joseph

Johnson). Another was Lucretius’ misogynistic representation of women, versus Darwin’s interest in improving educational opportunities for them. Lucretian didactic epic – as a genre – was not perfectly suited to Darwin’s didactic interest. It held the potential to be useful to him. He modified its features, often bringing in elements of other well known writing traditions to do it.

His modifications made the genre more relevant to his goals and more palatable to a wider audience of readers. The result was more persuasive poetry. It was not enough for Darwin to lure readers into his poetic garden. He needed to make them comfortable. Regardless of a reader’s religious beliefs (Anglicanism, Dissent, Deism, nonexistent), sex (male or female), social

5 J. M. Robertson, A History of Freethought Ancient and Modern to the Period of the French Revolution, vol. 2, 4th ed. (London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1969), 736. Robertson, writing about Pope’s hostility towards “the professed freethinkers,” notes Pope’s reference “in the Dunciad (iv, 488) . . . to the Theocles of Shaftesbury’s Moralists as maintaining a Lucretian theism or virtual atheism.” Eighteenth-century England tended to suspect that both Lucretius’ theism and Darwin’s Deism were merely nominal and to react negatively against their poetry. Darwin scholar Martin Priestman also regards Lucretius and Darwin as nominal believers and considers Lucretius to be the superior poet because he is the more thoroughgoing in his representation of materialism. I have opted to borrow the phrase “virtual atheism” because it is true to this history of interpretation of De Rerum Natura as an atheistic poem but also indicates that Lucretius was not, strictly speaking, an atheist.

standing (lower-class, middling, or upper-class), kind of education (formal or informal), and level of education (maximal or minimal), his poetry was welcoming, accessible, and enjoyable.

Darwin was particularly interested in the female reader, in cultivating her into a well

informed and invaluable member of society, in spite of her oft presumed intellectual limitations

and moral weakness. He credited her ability as a human being to learn science from his poetry, to

remember her morals, to be a good helpmate to her husband mentally, and to play a meaningful

role in teaching her male and female children. He expected her teaching to comprise not only

what science she knew, but also feminine gentleness and masculine canniness, and the

importance of having a share of each trait, though sex and station would still determine the

contexts and degrees in which it was proper to exhibit them. Men and women were not to be

perfect equals, but complementary. Darwin’s imagined female reader was to play a role in

engendering future women and men who were more enlightened than their forebears. For the

time, that was laudable, even proto-feminist. Darwin needed to persuade his readers that science

must be a) allowed to advance unimpeded and b) extended to women (as well as performing that

task itself). He represented science as having been safe, natural, moral, inevitable, and also

necessary to the continued progress of mankind, both technologically and morally. In his

representation, mankind has developed naturally and gradually to the point that what it has always done – that is, speculated about the natural world – has simply come to be called by a different name. If nothing else, he made the reading fun enough for learning to happen regardless of a lack of deeper understanding, and he made fun of himself enough to discourage deeper understanding where it might impede learning (i.e., where it is met with disagreement and resentment).

Darwin took didactic epic from Lucretius, who took it from Empedocles, who took it from

Hesiod’s Works and Days.6 Like Lucretius and Empedocles, Darwin modified the genre. He

made a space for himself in which to write, and he found a way to suit his purposes. He took

what worked, and he changed the rest. In doing so, however, he did not ignore poetic tradition.

He walked with it, rethought some of its steps, and moved off in a new direction. The result was

a new didactic, historical, mythological, epic form. Like other English didactic poets – and Pope

– he used rhymed couplets, and – like Pope – he often used them satirically. He used some

techniques from the writing traditions of Dissent and Deism to minimise perceptions that his

poems – the science that they promoted, the mixed audience that they addressed – would have

deleterious effects on common morality. Those techniques are seduction and subversion, candor,

and exegesis (Dissenting) on the one hand, and ridicule, the art of theological lying, and the

recovery of classical and contemporary sources (Deistic) on the other. There may be some

implicit satire there as well – not necessarily of belief in God, but of any public belief that his

representations could only be trusted if his avowals of God’s existence in his poetry actually

reflected his beliefs on the subject. Darwin’s poetic representation of nature allows for multiple

interpretations. His avowals of God’s existence in his poetry show that it is possible to interpret

the material in a Christian way.

Unlike Lucretius and the other satirists that I consider, Darwin respected the roles of

women and poetry in shaping consciousness. He wanted to give women an entryway into the

science of botany – and through it, science more generally. Poetry was, perhaps, the best vehicle.

6 See Monica Gale, Myth and Poetry in Lucretius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 51. As Gale explains, there has been speculation that Parmenides was also a source for Lucretius, but “there is no direct evidence that Lucretius was actually familiar with Parmenides’ poem” and “any influence seems more likely to be indirect: much may have come to Lucretius with Empedocles, with whose writings he was unquestionably familiar” (51). 19

Using elements of eighteenth-century erotic satire – which often represented botany and poetry

as effeminate – enabled him to downplay the significance of what he was doing: teaching women

science.

His poetry incorporates mythology, history (natural and human), and science and industry.

Each of his poems constitutes a single, coherent, progressive narrative, beginning with the event

of creation, and moving on, though not necessarily forward in a straightforwardly chronological

way. Old accounts of creation, natural processes, and so forth, are not confined to the beginning

of the poem, and of represented creation. When they appear, it is not for their own sake, but

rather because they correspond to contemporary ideas to some extent. Likewise, new facts, ideas,

and technologies appear in parts of the narrative where they have not yet come to light

historically. The interplay of old and new ideas helps to create a sense of historical continuity but also offers a counter-narrative of history. Darwin was representing the course of natural history and human (English) history and the concurrent progress of knowledge. In his representation, the history of mankind – as a biological species, and as a social species – is about discovery.

Enlightenment science resulted from, and enabled further inquiry into, the operations of nature.

Scientific accounts improved upon mythological and allegorical ones rather than replaced them outright. In Darwin’s counter-narrative, understanding of how things are deepens over time, with two related effects: mankind achieves better mastery over nature, such that it is more amenable to human needs and wants, but also a better understanding of what those needs and wants really are, such that human affairs become a matter for human rather than, necessarily, divine intervention.

It was not simply conjecture about the nature and extent of his beliefs that resulted in parodies of his poetry. The conjecture was fuelled in part by how he tried to prevent it from

happening. Darwin’s poetry showed that he was sympathetic to the cause of heterodox

Christianity (which included both Dissent and Deism), and moreover that he viewed what he was

doing as related to it. The only thing more alarming than Lucretius in the 1790s was a living

Deist poet: easier to find than an avowed atheist, but in the minds of many, an atheist nonetheless, and one with access to the general public. The techniques that I listed above were – and, in much modern criticism, still are – perceived as patently insincere, the words that an atheist used to hide his true nature and, with it, his agenda. Like Lucretius, Darwin wanted to teach a science through poetry, because it gave him access to a wide audience that included readers who may not have had access to science otherwise. Unlike Lucretius, the science that he promoted was not necessarily anti-religious. It was, however, opposed to the improper use of religion to deceive and control the masses. Whether or not Darwin showed his investments, they were going to be at issue. For him, tolerance for heterodox Christianity and tolerance for science and women’s education were closely parallel goals and would be beneficial for society as a whole. The most fundamental reason that he made avowals of God now and again in his poetry was that people knew that he was a Deist. Promoting his cause depended upon his ability to show that a lack of belief in God was neither the pre-requisite nor the result of what he was promoting.

His poetic narratives mirrored a tenet of Dissent: that the exercise of reason served to reinforce rather than confute what one already accepted as true (i.e., design by providence). The mirroring was meant to suggest that – like Dissent – the impact of science and its study by any interested person on the moral and political fabric of society was neither dangerous nor innocuous but rather beneficial, and as such should be granted the freedom and tolerance to proceed unfettered.

Darwin’s didactic epic poetry still matters, in spite of its original fate. It revived scientific instruction through poetry. It challenged perceptions about what kinds of people should be

reading poetry and why. It also challenged perceptions about what kinds of people had the right

to put pen to paper and teach what they believed in. Darwin’s Deistic Dissent, as it appears in his

poems, was about the right to see what the eyes could see, especially what was needed for

collective happiness, and to do something about it. That has meaning for our time whether or not his personal background is in any way relevant to our own.

I will not be dealing with Darwin’s translations of Linnaeus’ books in the body of this

dissertation, but they have some significance here. Although it was usual for physicians to have

some education in botany and an ancillary interest in the subject, it was unusual that Darwin

wrote his translations with a mind to selling them because he was not a botanist. As it happened,

the translations did not sell well. There is no record of Darwin linking the failure of the translated

editions to his decision to write The Botanic Garden. That he chose to pursue the same kind of

subject matter, in a popular form (poetry) suggests his awareness that there was not necessarily a

lack of interest in botany but perhaps an issue of access instead. If he did not move on to poetry

because it was more familiar than the formal botany text, nevertheless poetry afforded him an

opportunity that was too good to pass up. That opportunity was to bring the translated editions to

the attention of the same kind of audience (if not the very same audience) that had not read them

before: male and female laymen, who might have been intimidated, but whom the poem might

inform and embolden as well as excite. Fiction was the means by which a small-town physician

with big ideas could perhaps extend his audience and his influence. That he advertised the

translated editions in The Loves of the Plants (1789) may seem opportunistic. It is doubtful,

however, that he would write for that sole purpose. Beginning with The Loves of the Plants, he

gave general readers a way into science, showing that it could be poetic, and that it could also be

fun.

Darwin’s turn to poetry also kept him learning along with his readers. To teach science, he had to keep abreast of it. While he probably would have done that anyway, in some cases his verses prompted him to do experiments, or more experiments. His footnotes show what he read, what he speculated, what he hoped to discover. Where what he already knew did not raise questions in his mind – where he might have rested easy with his scientific knowledge – his verses did make him wonder, and he reflected, rethought, retested. In the last decade or so of his life, he wrote both poetry and non-fiction, and it is not as easy to split it up that way as it perhaps should be. On the one hand, he wrote The Loves of the Plants (1789) and The Economy of

Vegetation (1792) – or Parts II and I of The Botanic Garden – and The Temple of Nature (1803).

On the other hand, he wrote Phytologia (agricultural), Zoonomia (medical), and A Plan for the

Conduct of Female Education (pedagogical). There are connections within each category,

“poetry” and “non-fiction” (some stated, others unstated). There are also connections across those categories (again, some stated, others not). For any person to write on different subjects in a fairly short period of time (just over a decade), often concurrently, at great length in most cases

(the Plan is short compared with the others), and at very great length overall, would result in some enmeshment of materials, method, and so on. The alternative to interconnected writing is to have the right hand doing one thing and the left hand doing another, with the person behind it all at a total loss to articulate his or her full identity. What all of Darwin’s works have in common with each other is that they are overtly didactic. Darwin was many things in his lifetime, but at heart he was a teacher: it shows in everything that he wrote for the public.

Darwin sought order through classification, and he believed that Linnaean taxonomy was its language – which needed only to be translated to achieve universality. When he could not find order, he expected it to be there nonetheless, hidden but present, and he deferred judgment to a

23 later date and a more advanced science. To put it another way, he held onto the idea of perfectibility generally, including its moral dimension, but for him its primary mechanism was science, not faith. That would be a difficult position to justify taking, but I do not think that it was entirely elective, or that it was overly idiosyncratic. I think that it was quite probably what made the most sense to many other science-minded Dissenters (as Darwin was raised) and Deists

(as he was from at least his early adulthood onward). What interests me is what Darwin did from the position in which history – for him, a living history, and more simply life as he knew it – placed him. His poetry shows his awareness that there was the potential for conflicting truths, for scriptural revelation to have dictated one thing as eternally true, and scientific thinking to challenge or even overturn that apparent fact. That kind of discrepancy – between what one is told is true and what seems to be true instead – tends to generate doubt. Doubt tends to generate speculation. As for speculation, in Darwin’s view, it was what poetry is made up of, and it was also essential to scientific discovery, which sometimes shows that there is some truth in (for example) a pagan myth after all. Without speculation, nobody would know anything: it drives inquiry forward. In strictly pragmatic terms, it was equally possible that a belief could be confirmed in whole or in part at some point in the future as not – nobody knew if or when it would happen. Darwin was probably not a firm believer in the Christian God. He was, however, a firm believer in speculation and seeing where that led.

Chapter Summaries

I deal with several different bodies of criticism and other kinds of commentary that are relevant to my project (i.e., including but not limited to modern criticism of Darwin’s poetry). In the process, I deal with the main difficulties or impediments in Darwin criticism, these being the issues of his beliefs and genre. I show how I have arrived at my reasoning and methodology for

the close reading: explaining why and how Lucretian didactic epic was relevant to Darwin as a

Deistic Dissenter, and identifying the tools that I use for analysing his primary use of this genre

as a model and secondary use of others in order to tailor it to his purposes. Each of Chapters 2, 3, and 4 closes with a claim that the next chapter aims to substantiate. The final body chapter,

Chapter 5, presents the close reading.

Chapter 2, Darwin’s Beliefs and Milieu

In this chapter, I discuss some remarks made by two of Darwin’s readers: Coleridge and

Wordsworth. I consider historian Patricia Howell Michaelson’s explanation of how best to think about the beliefs of historical figures. Based on her criteria, I posit that Darwin was a Deistic

Dissenter. Drawing from the work of critics in various disciplinary fields, I consider Darwin’s involvement with the radical London publisher Joseph Johnson, his circle of predominantly

Dissenter writers, and their interests in science and education. On the basis of those publishing and writing interests, I discuss the reading public of the 1790s; the French Revolution and the

Revolution Debate in England; the Tory/ High Church suspicion of Dissent, Deism, and science; what Dissent and Deism entailed as systems of belief; what Dissenters and Deists typically promoted in their theological writings; and how they regarded science (these topics are subdivided as appropriate). I close with a claim: that Darwin’s poems with philosophical notes are very likely involved in the writing traditions of Dissent and Deism. They are not theological texts, strictly speaking: their purpose is not to defend a set of religious beliefs. Rather, I regard

Darwin as connecting his overarching poetic aim of promoting science and its female study with the pre-existing dialogue of religious freedom and tolerance for heterodox Christianity implicitly.

Chapter 3, Questions Concerning Darwin’s Didacticism and Genre

In Chapter 3, I open with a discussion of two important parodies of Darwin’s poetry: “The

Loves of the Triangles,” by the editors of the Anti-Jacobin, and The Golden Age, by an anonymous author. Together, the parodies help to shed some light on how Darwin’s poetry was regarded by those outside of his community. “The Loves of the Triangles” took The Loves of the

Plants as its model, reacting against it (and, by extension, The Botanic Garden as a whole) in terms of didactic poetry in the style of Pope’s Essay on Man. Whereas (the editors presumed)

Pope viewed what was as being true, Darwin viewed what was as being false. Both “The Loves of the Triangles” and The Golden Age represented Darwin as a radical thinker whose words could not be trusted no matter the genre in which they appeared, because his purpose was the promotion of immorality in the first place, and political revolution in the second.

Like Coleridge’s remark on the allegedly sick-making capacity of The Botanic Garden,

“The Loves of the Triangles” is quite well known today. While “The Loves of the Triangles” identifies didactic poetry, and some critics do think of Darwin’s poetry in terms of that tradition

(negatively), most do not. I address criticism from the 1900s to the present that deals with

Darwin’s poetry in terms of assorted literary genres – mainly heroic epic and mock-epic – but also the tradition of eighteenth-century didactic, to a limited extent. I discuss the emphasis on his beliefs, how they are thought to inform his poetic purpose, and how his strong didacticism is considered problematic. I show where critics nod toward Lucretius as a possible role model for

Darwin, as a materialist rather than as a poet, strictly speaking. Effectively, I represent the general grounds on which critics have evaluated Darwin’s scientific poetry as such so far – i.e., in terms of different formats or genres (epic/ mock-epic), and then point out a direction for re- evaluating it, i.e., in terms primarily of another genre, towards which several pieces of criticism

gesture, but never acknowledge fully. There is, of course, no single prescriptive determination of

what critical texts are important, the order in which they are to be read, and the manner in which

they are to be construed. I represent the path more or less as I have followed it. My closing claim

in this chapter is that Darwin’s Dissenting poetry is in the genre of Lucretian didactic epic, but

also engages with the tradition of eighteenth-century English didactic poetry.

In Chapter 4, Reviving and Revising Lucretian Didactic Epic: One Genre, Two Problems,

Plural Traditions, I deal with the areas of research outside of Darwin criticism that are most relevant to my reading of his poetry. I consider the tradition and genre of Lucretian didactic epic and the tradition of eighteenth-century English didactic poetry (in plural genres, including mock- didactic epic, but not didactic epic proper), arguing that it is possible to conceive of eighteenth- century poetry in the genre of didactic epic but also the tradition of English didactic poetry. I provide a synthesis of my reading on didactic epic’s features as a genre (Darwin would have had to negotiate with these features). I discuss selected translations and parodies of De Rerum

Natura, showing that the poem’s virtual atheism was upsetting to eighteenth-century readers; this would have been unsuitable for Darwin’s purposes. With reference to Richard Polwhele’s The

Unsex’d Females – in which he praised Darwin’s kind of poetry (without identifying it with

Lucretius, I should note) but took issue with women reading botany books of all sorts – I consider how Lucretius’ unambiguous representation of himself teaching a specific kind of reader would also have been problematic for Darwin. I consider how the written traditions of

Dissent and Deism (non-literary) and the tradition of erotic satire (in plural genres) might have supplied Darwin with tools for modifying Lucretian didactic epic’s most offensive features. My

claim is that Darwin could possibly have used elements of those traditions to remove, reduce, or

replace Lucretian didactic epic’s offensiveness, and pursue his own goals.

In Chapter 5, Reading Darwin’s Dissenting Didactic Epics, I provide close readings of his

poems with reference to elements or techniques common to didactic epic, dissent and deism, and

erotic satire. I show how Darwin’s poem is in conformity with Lucretian didactic epic as a genre,

how he altered it, and the role of his borrowings from other traditions in those alterations. I

represent Darwin as having been actively engaged with and against established poetic tradition,

according to which there was no such thing as a scientific epic but only superficially scientific

poems, written in minor genres. In contrast, his poetry is both didactic and epic.

In Chapter 6, Conclusion, I provide a retrospective of my argument and reading, and suggest some areas of research for which an understanding of Darwin’s poetry as didactic epic may provide new footing and points of departure.

Notes on Citation

My citation system is based on the sixteenth edition of the Chicago Manual of Style’s

model for using both notes and bibliography. I have chosen to use a combination of footnotes

and parenthetical citations to avoid cluttering the page with strings of “Ibid.,” and to limit

parenthetical citations for consecutive uninterrupted quotations from a single source to page

number. In each chapter, the first use of a text is acknowledged in a footnote. Subsequent uses

are cited parenthetically by author surname (e.g., King-Hele), short title (e.g., Erasmus Darwin:

A Life), and page number(s), but with the following exceptions. I cite the author’s surname only

in the first parenthetical citation following the footnoted citation, and the short title of the text in

question only where doing so helps to avoid confusion with other works by the author in

question. In brief, where several quotations from the same text appear without interruption by

any other text, I have provided only the relevant page numbers. Reference to the same text in

each subsequent chapter (if applicable) follows the same pattern: footnote for the first reference,

28 parenthetical citations for any further references. The bibliography includes works that I have consulted as well works that I have cited in the dissertation.

The spell that I say must be broken is the taboo against a forthright, scientific, no-holds- barred investigation of religion as one natural phenomenon among many. But certainly one of the most pressing and plausible reasons for resisting this claim is the fear that if the spell is broken – if religion is put under the bright lights and the microscope – there is a serious risk of breaking a different and much more important spell: the life-enriching enchantment of religion itself. If interference caused by scientific investigation somehow disabled people, rendering them incapable of states of mind that are the springboards for religious experience or religious conviction, this could be a terrible calamity. . . . The first spell – the taboo – and the second spell – religion itself – are bound together in a curious embrace. Part of the strength of the second may be – may be – the protection it receives from the first. But who knows? If we are enjoined by the first spell not to investigate this possible causal link, then the second spell has a handy shield, whether it needs it or not.7

Chapter 2

Darwin’s Beliefs and Milieu

In the introduction, I noted that The Temple of Nature was poorly received, and I quoted

from James Venable Logan, who wrote that the public taste had changed, and that Lyrical

Ballads had played a part in that. I equivocated slightly: Darwin’s poetry played a part in its

own rejection. It was of a piece – it had a recognizable format, style, and message – and while

Coleridge and Wordsworth were initially interested in it, they deemed it problematic. As I will

argue, because of their shared assumption about Darwin’s religious beliefs, they took issue with

what they perceived as the message of his poems with philosophical notes. They assumed that he

had no religious beliefs, and that poems of a philosophical nature would not only reflect his

atheism but also potentially promote it to his readers.

In this chapter, I deal with what I have described as a key issue in Darwin criticism:

conjecture over his beliefs and how they shaped his poetic purpose. I address that issue with

reference to several kinds of commentary and bodies of criticism. More useful than speculation

about what his personal beliefs did or did not entail – because it is effectively impossible to

7 Daniel C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (London: Penguin, 2006), 17-18. 30

know for certain – is an investigation into the communities of faith in which Darwin was active, their overlap, and his known interests. That is how his probable aims as a writer will come to

light. I begin with some consideration of Coleridge’s and Wordsworth’s critiques of Darwin’s

presumed absolute irreligion and its presumed effect on his poetic purpose as a didactic poet.

That leads into my discussion of his known affiliations, Dissent and Deism, his membership in

Joseph Johnson’s circle of writers, and what kinds of texts Johnson was interested in publishing

and why. Johnson’s writers were predominantly Dissenters, and he was, perhaps, the best known

publisher for Dissent. Some of his writers, like Darwin, were Deistic Dissenters. I consider the

mainstream alarmism in England in the 1790s – which grew because of the Revolution in France

– over Dissent and Deism, and what granting them freedom and tolerance would cause. What

Dissenters and Deists actually believed, what science and their activity in it could generate, and

more specifically how their published writings – theological, scientific, or otherwise – could

influence the general public in England were the foci of the debate. This was Darwin’s milieu.

How he conducted himself within it is of more interest than the possibility that he was an atheist.

In the next chapter, I will deal with Darwin criticism that ascribes a set of beliefs to Darwin,

considers what genre he appears to have chosen for his poems, and claims that his projected

interests reduced his ability to uphold the terms of that genre.

Darwin’s Literary Critics: Coleridge and Wordsworth on His Beliefs and Scientific

Poetry

As David W. Ullrich explains, the “debt of Coleridge’s poetry to Darwin has received

much critical attention from scholars representing different interests and expertise, and coming to

diverse conclusions.”8 He acknowledges that “there has been a good deal of controversy – and

significant inaccurate speculation – in regard to Coleridge’s intellectual relationship with and

assessment of Erasmus Darwin” (Ullrich, 74), and he contends that because “Coleridge’s

appraisals of Darwin vary provocatively” (74), Darwin and Coleridge scholars alike can be “less

than generous to Coleridge” (74) for a number of reasons. I would add that Darwin’s reputation

has been damaged as a result of one of Coleridge’s appraisals in particular (with which I deal

below). Ullrich proposes that we should think of Coleridge and Darwin as having had two

different relationships, one poetic and the other intellectual (74). In his view, there is a clear-cut

distinction “between Coleridge’s consistent criticism of Darwin as poet and his waning opinion

of Darwin as natural philosopher and thinker” (74). Read in light of that distinction, Coleridge’s

various appraisals of Darwin will “serve to contrast succinctly Coleridge’s early and late position

as to the compatibility of science and revealed religion” (74); as Ullrich explains, Coleridge

determined gradually that science and religion were incompatible.

Coleridge and Darwin met just once. From 23 to 24 January, 1796, Coleridge was

Darwin’s guest at his house in Derby (Ullrich, 75). Shortly thereafter, Coleridge wrote a letter to

Josiah Wade, in which he described Darwin as “possess[ing], perhaps, a greater range of

knowledge than any other man in Europe, and the most inventive of philosophical men.”9 He

also indicated that Darwin thought “in a new train on all subjects except religion” (Coleridge,

Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 177). Ullrich explains that the visit had involved a

vocal disagreement on “two related issues: the existence of God and the evidence for revealed

8 David W. Ullrich, “Distinctions in Poetic and Intellectual Influence: Coleridge’s Use of Erasmus Darwin,” Wordsworth Circle, 15:2 (1984), 74. 9 Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Josiah Wade, January of 1796, in Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, vol. 1, 1785-1800, ed. Earl Leslie Griggs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), 177. 32 religion” (75). Although he thinks that it is unlikely that Coleridge misheard Darwin, he considers it “quite possible that Coleridge was duped by Darwin’s feigning a viewpoint not entirely consonant with his actual opinion” (75), which he might have done “for argument’s sake, or to lead the young Coleridge to infer as much” (75). Ullrich describes a young Coleridge who was uncertain of his beliefs and suffered from feelings of guilt, and who was troubled by those who seemed able to make a quick and easy decision (75), particularly (supposed) “infidels”

(75). There was also an age difference in excess of forty years between Coleridge and Darwin;

Coleridge was only twenty-three at the time of the visit (75). It is plausible, then, that Coleridge took Darwin’s statements too seriously, in part because of insecurity, and in part because of

Darwin’s performance. Ullrich shows that Coleridge continued to refer to Darwin quite positively for the rest of 1796 and 1797, judging him “the most widely-read and original-minded man, excepting the subject of religion” (76). Early Coleridge, then, distinguished between

Darwin’s theological thinking and his other intellectual thinking; over time, he came to regard

Darwin as typical of uncritical atheism (76), and, finally, “intellectual arrogance” (76).

Ulrich indicates that “during the same period Coleridge criticize[d] Darwin’s poetry” (76).

He also confirms that “in terms of broad aesthetic judgment, Coleridge was always sharply critical of Darwin’s verse” (77). One of Coleridge’s remarks, especially, has been damaging to the study of Darwin’s poetry. The remark appeared in a letter to Thelwall in May of 1796.

Coleridge wrote, “Milton is harmonious to me, & I absolutely nauseate Darwin’s poem.”10

As Ullrich notes, “scholars have excerpted the remark without having investigated its context thoroughly” (77). In many cases, reference to the rest of the letter is also omitted. In my view,

10 Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Thelwall, January of 1796, in Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, vol. 1, 1785-1800, ed. Earl Leslie Griggs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), 216. 33

casual reference to the remark has tended to create the unfortunate impression that Darwin’s

poems were, and are, simply not very good. Ullrich points out that the letter was actually in

response to Thelwall’s letter of 10 May 1796 (78), in which he had used the phrase “religious

musings” (78) in connection with Milton’s poetry, objected to the same kind of feel to some of

Coleridge’s poems, and further criticized his “affected meter” (78). In Ullrich’s reading of

Coleridge’s reply, the discussion of harmony is therefore part of an indirect defence of his chosen meter. For Coleridge, Ullrich explains, “a metric pattern which stresses the external decorative aspect of an object is absurd in that it obscures the object’s quality, its essential character” (78), and so he chose to “give equal weight to the essentialist adjective and noun, resulting in the accents Thelwall found affected” (78).

Ullrich quotes from Notebooks (I 132), in which Coleridge described Darwin’s poetry as a

“succession of Landscapes, or Paintings” (77), which “arrests the attention too often, and prevents the rapidity necessary to pathos – it makes the little great” (77). Ullrich determines,

then, that whereas Coleridge appreciated Milton’s ability to associate objects with their qualities,

he saw Darwin’s objects merely “as facets of decoration” (78), and Darwin’s poetry as “a wholly

surface phenomenon” (78). The concern, as Ullrich expresses it, that Darwin’s poetry may have

constituted “catalogues of natural phenomena” (77) – in which “the surface representation was

paramount by design” (77), and the effect was “beautiful” (77) but lacking in “human emotion”

(77) – is interesting and important to consider in the context of confusion over Darwin’s genre. I

would argue that the same surface phenomenon, grounded in a defined genre whose primary

objective was not to generate pathos but rather reasoned reflection, made sense. Ullrich suggests

that for Darwin to have applied his “impartial and precise” (75) mind to “theological matters”

(75), as well as science, would have pleased his young guest. It is possible that this is what he

was doing in his poetry to some extent. Impartiality and precision allowed readers the time and

opportunity to form a measured response to his representation of nature.

Coleridge’s letter to Thelwall invoked Darwin’s intellectual persona. As Logan indicates,

Coleridge “particularly detested what he thought was Darwin’s atheism . . . deplored his unbelief

. . . [and was] particularly horrified by Darwin’s boast that he had never read one book in

defence of ‘such stuff’ as religion . . .”11 Coleridge’s letter to Thelwall opens with a description

of “his [Thelwall’s] Atheistic Brethren” (Coleridge, Collected Letters, 214), including “Dr.

Darwin” (214). Such men reportedly “square their moral systems exactly according to their

inclinations” (214): in other words, their god is nothing more than brute desire. Coleridge tells

Thelwall not to take issue with “metaphysics in poetry” (215). He muses, “Is not Akenside’s a

metaphysical poem? Perhaps, you do not like Akenside – well – but I do – and so do a great

many others – why pass an act of Uniformity against Poets?” (215). As Coleridge explains, “that

Poetry pleases, which interests – my religious poetry interests the religious, who read it with

rapture – why? because it awakes in them all the associations connected with a love of future

existence &c.” (215).What people “like” (215) has fundamentally to do with what “interest[s]”

(215) them. He attributes poetic “Harmony” (216) to “associations connected with a love of future existence &c.” Hence, Coleridge’s critique of Darwin’s form is also a critique of his apparent atheism.

By calling Darwin one of Thelwall’s “atheistic brethren,” Coleridge connects Darwin with

Radical Dissent, and Radical Dissent with atheism. Of course, not all atheists were Radical

Dissenters, and not all Radical Dissenters were atheists. Coleridge’s use of the word “atheistic”

is less important than what he uses it to accomplish: painting a group of authors with the same

11 James Venable Logan, The Poetry and Aesthetics of Erasmus Darwin (New York: Octagon, 1972), 20. 35

brush, and attributing to them a common lack of moral integrity. Coleridge’s only reference to

anything literary is his defence of what he terms metaphysical poetry and connects with Milton.

He asserts that an Act of Uniformity should not be passed against poets. In other words, just as

Dissenters should not be forced to read from the Book of Common Prayer, so too should poets

have the freedom to write metaphysical poetry, even if it is no longer in vogue. Coleridge

supposes that Thelwall might not like metaphysical poetry; the reflection is most likely tongue-

in-cheek. He claims that a great many people like metaphysical poetry, and he is one of them

(putting him in good company). Then, he makes the bolder claim that religious people read his

religious poetry with rapture. Setting aside his representation of the reception of his religious poetry, the more general implication of his words is that any sincerely religious person will prefer religious poetry over (for example) Darwin’s poetry. He also implies that there is room

within Dissent for dissent, and that Radical Dissent is not only non-authoritative, it lacks the

power to change poetic preferences.

According to that same logic, though, Darwin was not required to write metaphysical

poetry. Coleridge simply did not have to like what he chose to write instead. This is in keeping

with Ullrich’s view of Coleridge as someone who was “avoiding the rush to embrace the public

censure of Darwin” (“Distinctions in Poetic and Intellectual Influence,” 76). In the final analysis,

Coleridge’s remark on Darwin’s poetry was more personal than formal, and it was not

categorical. It was based on his aesthetics as a religious person who enjoyed religious poetry, not

on Darwin’s use of science and verse in one text, which interested him. Coleridge’s religious

views – Ullrich indicates that he was a Unitarian at the time – were complex, and they are

beyond the scope of my project. My concern here is that, although he imputed atheism to

Darwin, he did so in such a way as to reveal Darwin’s perceived membership in Dissent,

specifically, Radical Dissent. He also revealed his concerns over what kind of poetry a Radical

Dissenter could be expected to write. At best, it simply would not be metaphysical. At worst,

however, it could promote unbelief. Even in that case, however, Coleridge did not seem to view

such poetry as posing any kind of serious threat. He expected most readers to feel nauseated by

it, not rapturous.

Wordsworth became familiar with Darwin’s work through Coleridge.12 In Wordsworth’s

Preface to Lyrical Ballads, he attributed the inspiration for the poem “Goody Blake and Harry

Gill” to an episode in Darwin’s medical treatise Zoonomia. Darwin reported having “received

good information of the truth of the following case.”13 Evidently “a young farmer” (Darwin,

Zoonomia, 359) had found “his hedges broke, and the sticks carried away during a frosty season”

(359), and so he “determined to watch for the thief” (359). The farmer hid “under a hay-stack”

(359) for some hours, and caught “an old woman” (359) in the act of plundering his hedges. He

“seized his prey with violent threats” (359) and there was “some altercation” (359). She reprimanded him in the form of a pious curse: “Heaven grant, that thou never mayest know again the blessing to be warm” (359). He was cold the very next day, and took to his bed two weeks later, staying there for more than twenty years, in order to avoid the air. Darwin’s interest was in how, from “this one insane idea” (359), i.e., that the old woman had truly cursed him, the farmer actually became cold (359). For Wordsworth, the episode was compelling for a quite different

12 Nicola Trott and Seamus Perry, 1800: The New Lyrical Ballads (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 16. 13 Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia; or, the laws of organic life. . . . , vol. 2 (London: printed for J. Johnson, in St. Paul’s Churchyard, [1794]-96), 359. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale Document # CW109564210. ESTC # T113901. 37

reason: “The truth is an important one; the fact (for it is a fact) is a valuable illustration of it.”14

He seems to have been interested in the farmer’s deterioration as just deserts rather than as the physical manifestation of mental illness. In Wordsworth’s poem, the old woman “pray’d/ To

God that is the judge of all.”15 Specifically, she prayed, “God! Who art never out of hearing,/ O

may he never more be warm!” (Wordsworth, “Goody Blake and Harry Gill,” 99-100), and

reportedly “young Harry heard what she had said” (103). He turned “cold and very chill” (106),

and reportedly “all who see him say ‘tis plain,/ That, live as long as live he may,/ He never will

be warm again” (118-20). The speaker represents the outcome as an act of God against Harry for

taking “vengeance” (68) against “poor Goody Blake” (88), and exhorts, “Now think, ye farmers

all, I pray,/ Of Goody Blake and Harry Gill” (127-28).

Wordsworth and Darwin interpreted the fact of the farmer turning cold differently.

Whereas Wordsworth thought about it in terms of faith, Darwin thought about it in terms of

something like psychosomatics. What is important is how Wordsworth incorporated the fact into

his poem: as a form of proof. He regarded his poem as having scientific support. He reported

having “the satisfaction of knowing that [the episode] has been communicated to many hundreds

of people who would never have heard of it, had it not been narrated as a Ballad, and in a more

impressive metre than is usual in Ballads” (Wordsworth, Preface, 184). By drawing from

Zoonomia, Wordsworth showed some support for Darwin: content could be shared among non-

literary and literary texts; poetry could have a special role to play in disseminating scientific

findings (both widely and entertainingly); and these findings were not necessarily objectionable

14 William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, in Lyrical Ballads: 1798 and 1800, eds. Michael Gamer and Dahlia Porter (Canada: Broadview, 2008), 183. 15 William Wordsworth, “Goody Blake and Harry Gill,” in Lyrical Ballads, lines 95-96. Parenthetical references are to line numbers of the 1798 edition. 38

in themselves. Rather, the end to which they were deployed could be problematic. Wordsworth’s

critique was more literary than that of Coleridge. He was making a claim about what poetry

should do, and scientific poetry’s capacity for doing it. In Wordsworth’s view, good poetry made

associations between earthly matters and providence.

Darwin’s Purported Beliefs and His Community of Belief

The epigraph for this chapter comes from Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural

Phenomenon, by Daniel C. Dennett. In the book, he addresses himself primarily to “the curious

and conscientious citizens of [his] native land” (Dennett, xi), America. He hopes to engage

“American readers,” “as many as possible, not just the academics” (xi). His purpose in so doing

is polemical. He means to persuade readers to consent to the scientific study of religion as a

natural phenomenon, representing it as certainly beneficial and only uncertainly hazardous.

Breaking that first spell might not break the second spell, that of religion itself. As he writes,

nobody knows what will be discovered, and any damage to religion that might result from scientific study would only be partial. If evolutionary biology can identify religion as a natural phenomenon, then we must expect that its truth value will only be part of the story of how it came about. The rest of the story will have to do with what purposes it has served. As he explains later on, if the “convictions” (17) of “those who are religious and believe religion to be the best hope of humankind” (17) turn out to be “right – especially if they are obviously right, on

further reflection – we skeptics will not only concede this but enthusiastically join the cause”

(17). Otherwise, “the moral high ground” (17) will be shown to be undeserved. Dennett’s

polemic depends most upon his representation of the shared goal of skeptics and the religious:

“We want what they (mostly) say they want: a world at peace, with as little suffering as we can

manage, with freedom and justice and well-being and meaning for all” (17). He implicitly

encourages religious readers to identify themselves with those who truly value peaceful co-

existence. They “should want to know” (17) if their religious convictions are erroneous. If their

faith is real, then they would not expect to be proved wrong. The only people who have a reason

to be afraid are the ones who depend upon a given set of religious convictions to justify acts of

violence.

Dennett links potential backlash against his “evolutionary perspective” (259) on religion

with the backlash against eighteenth-century atheists and Deists:

the most popular move is the pre-emptive disqualification, and it has been well known

since the eighteenth century, when it was used to discredit the earliest atheists and deists

(such as David Hume and Baron d’Holbach, and some great American heroes, Benjamin

Franklin and Thomas Paine). (Dennett, 259)

The explicit link that he makes is between resistance to a project like his and the treatment of eighteenth-century atheists and Deists. There is also an implicit link between his “evolutionary perspective” and the kind of discredited perspectives that he identifies by reference to the names

Hume, d’Holbach, Franklin, and Paine: that is, the kind that seek not only to demonstrate but, more powerfully, to persuade. Dennett lists authors whom he identifies as having been punished for their views. Darwin’s name could very well be listed among the others on that account: as a known Deist and a suspected atheist, he did need to be aware that he risked being misjudged and having false constructions put on his poetry. But it is important to remember that attacks on atheists and Deists also had to do with fear over what they meant versus what they actually wrote, and their polemical purpose (if any). There was a complex relation between the antagonism to religious difference and the means that many authors employed to conceal or temper it. Coleridge and Wordsworth suspected Darwin of having atheistic intent: I hold that it

was a mistaken suspicion, but to the extent that Deist writers commonly employed subterfuge

and that Darwin engages with the Deist tradition in his poems, it made sense to wonder.

Patricia Howell Michaelson explains that, in the eighteenth century, “it was enough to call

someone a Catholic or an atheist, without needing to specify further details.” 16 Witness

Coleridge’s reference to Darwin as atheistic: what details was he taking into account? We have

to read the letter for cues, and what we find is an implicit connection between atheism and

radical Dissent. Michaelson points out, “modern historians, too, tend to assume that religious

labels are unambiguous” (Michaelson, 29). Modern literary criticism of Darwin’s poetry has

represented him as a Dissenter, as a Deist, and as an atheist. Each of the terms facilitates a particular kind of argument. For example, if the primary focus is on Darwin’s politics,

“Dissenter” has utility, because of the involvement of religious Dissenters in English politics and liberal projects (e.g., education, science). If the focus is on his level of religious commitment,

“Deist” provides the best starting point. If, rather, the focus is the conflict between what he truly believed (e.g., his proto-evolutionary ideas, some of which directly contradicted the Scriptural account of creation) and what it was acceptable or advantageous for him to admit publicly (i.e., at the very least, the existence of a prime mover, an architect of the universe), “Atheist” is most useful. The variety of labels used is not necessarily a problem; each label sheds some light on

Darwin and results in interesting readings of his poetry. What we need to guard against is using a

given label without being clear about why we have chosen it, how we are using it, and what

kinds of meaning it had in his time. Otherwise we risk projecting qualities onto the poems that

may not, in fact, inhere in them. We have to look into what is known about what Darwin

16 Patricia Howell Michaelson, “Religion and politics in the Revolution Debate: Burke, Wollstonecraft, Paine,” in The French Revolution Debate in English Literature and Culture, ed. Lisa Plummer Crafton (Greenwood: Westport, 1997), 29. 41

believed, with whom he associated, what they were interested in accomplishing and why. Rather

than (for example) taking apparently atheistic content as confirmation of his personal atheism

and using it as a lens for what he writes on sex, we have to look at what purpose the material

serves textually (if any). Whatever Darwin really believed is a locked box: he was never very

open-handed about it. That we cannot be certain is not the impediment to understanding his

poetry that it might seem to be.

Michaelson specifies three considerations for analysis. These “variables” (Michaelson, 29)

“can be independent” (29), and they include “heritage” (29), “culture” (29), and “faith” (29).

Heritage refers to a religion or tradition; culture, to “membership in a community” (29); and

faith, to “personal beliefs of all kinds” (29). She attributes “dispute[s] about a person’s religion”

(29) to “different people . . . considering different variables” (29), and uses Thomas Paine as a

prime example: Roosevelt called him “a filthy little atheist” (29); Daniel Conway, thinking of

heritage and community broadly, “a Quaker” (29); and others, thinking only of his personal

beliefs, “a deist” (29). As the example that she provides illustrates, it is important to consider all

of the variables – and, when we choose to focus on any given one, to be clear about why. For my

purposes, Darwin was a “Deistic Dissenter.” My reasoning is as follows. Darwin’s family were

Dissenters. He became a Deist at least as early as the 1750s, when he became friends with the

son of Hermann Samuel Reimarus, who was – as historian James A. Herrick describes him – a

Deist who “questioned the divinity of Christ and denied the historicity of the Resurrection,” yet

“maintained an outward adherence to Christianity.”17 During that time, Darwin is known to have

read Reimarus’ work. As an adult, Darwin was a member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham,

the Derby Philosophical Society of 1783, and Joseph Johnson’s circle of writers. The

17 James A. Herrick, The Radical Rhetoric of the English Deists: The Discourse of Skepticism, 1680-1750 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997), 27. 42

membership of all three groups was predominantly Dissenters; there were also Deists and

atheists among them. Dissent was the umbrella: Dissenters, Deists, and covert or quiet atheists

were the people standing beneath it. (There were, of course, Deists and atheists standing under

other umbrellas, including Anglicanism.) Under that umbrella, personal belief was less

“sheltered” than subordinated to communitarian purposes. All three of the groups in which

Darwin was a member were interested in promoting science and its study. Because Johnson

published Darwin’s poetry (among others of his works), the Johnson circle is where we should

start to look for a connection between what I have called Darwin’s Deistic Dissent and how it

potentially informed his poetic purpose in his poems with philosophical notes.

Dissenting in Print: Darwin and Joseph Johnson’s Circle of Writers

Following the lapse of the Licensing Act (1695), the industry of publishing flourished. As

William St Clair explains, by 1780,

the publishers of Great Britain were free, both legally and in practice, to reprint any texts

they chose from the hundreds of thousands which lay outside the copyright restrictions of

the 1710 statute. Apart from English-language Bibles and some other texts where the

previous arrangements were permitted by statute to continue, the public domain now

included everything first printed in England or Scotland before 1746, and some even

more recent publications.18

Paul O’Flynn tells us that there was an “extraordinary explosion of radical writing”19 in the

1790s. It was fuelled by the American Revolution of 1776, the French Revolution of 1789, and

the “onslaught” of the industrial revolution in Britain (O’Flynn, 85). As Carol Hall explains,

18 William St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 122. 19 Paul O’Flynn, Beware of Reverence: Writing and Radicalism in the 1790s,” in Writing and Radicalism, ed. John Lucas (New York: Longmans, 1996), 84. 43

Joseph Johnson built his business and reputation as a publisher by putting out texts by – or involving the work of – many of “the leading figures in London’s liberal and dissenting intellectual circles.”20 Such figures included Joseph Priestley, William Godwin, Mary

Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine, Henry Fuseli – and Erasmus Darwin (Hall, 159). Within

Dissenting intellectual circles, argues literary critic Daniel E. White, there was “a flourishing not of sectarianism but of denominationalism.”21 To put it another way, there was a flourishing not of Unitarianism (for example) but of Dissent as a unified whole. “Dissenters were forced to articulate the virtues of religious division precisely as a means toward political and social unity, or at least harmony” (White, 7). That, I believe, is what Coleridge was doing in his letter to

Thelwall: articulating some of the differences between himself and Thelwall through reference to

Darwin and his poetry, but being fairly agreeable about it. Although his distaste for Darwin is aimed at his apparent atheism, he expresses that distaste in primarily aesthetic terms; he makes light of difference (albeit at Darwin’s expense). Regardless of differences in views of God,

Dissenters had a common goal, and that was tolerance. Generally, Dissent’s separation from the

Church of England came down to three principles: “private judgment, personal conscience, and free interpretation of scripture” (25). But, all the same, as historian John Seed clarifies, Dissent

“was not a coherent and autonomous entity, moving through time like an object through space,”22 but rather “a shifting constellation of groups and congregations – Presbyterians,

Independents, Baptists, Quakers – with histories as diverse as their theological tenets” (Seed, 2).

20 Carol Hall, “Joseph Johnson,” in The British Literary Book Trade, 1700-1820, vol. 154 of the Dictionary of Literary Biography, eds. James K. Bracken and Joel Silver (Detroit: Gale, 1995), 159. 21 Daniel E. White, Early Romanticism and Religious Dissent (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2006), 6. 22 John Seed, Dissenting Histories: Religious Division and the Politics of Memory in Eighteenth-Century England (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), 2. 44

It was “always insecure, condemned to remake boundaries and reaffirm continuities across time.

It is this active process of building and rebuilding bridges to a receding past, constructing and

reconstructing the narrative identity of what it meant to be a religious Dissenter” (3). As Seed

indicates, the process of construction and reconstruction was a narrative process. It took place in

print before it ever took hold of minds and shaped identities. Literary critic Stephen C. Behrendt

describes radical publishers on the whole as having “performed a risky but necessary service by

keeping in the public eye and mind the existence of a strong opposition to government policy,

both at home and abroad.”23 In so doing, they “exerted a powerful influence over the literary and pseudo-literary culture of England” (Behrendt, 14). Whatever else literature was, it was capable of being political, too.

O’Flynn discourages the separation of texts into “literary” and “non-literary” (85) based on

political content. As he writes, “to split the seven texts” – by Blake, Barbauld, Williams and

Bage, Paine, Wollstonecraft and Godwin – into the literary and the non-literary, and then

to shunt the latter group off to the Politics Department is to impoverish any sense of the

1790s that might emerge at the end of a process of study. That impoverishment is of

course only deepened if we then make a further split into major Romantic (Blake) and

minor Romantic (the rest) authors, with Barbaud, Williams and Bage disappearing up a

footnote or two and Blake foregrounded as a solitary genius. (O’Flynn, 85)

O’Flynn goes on to problematise the term “Romantic” when it comes to someone such as Paine, whose “bold rationalism” (86) is at odds with the “conventional connotations” (86) of a

Romantic writer. All of the authors that he discusses were “part of Johnson’s circle” (85). They all “refuse to stay within the tight boundaries that were constructed later on for academic

23 Stephen C. Behrendt, Romanticism, Radicalism, and the Press (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1997), 14. 45 convenience” (87). Darwin is no exception.

He also delivered bold rationalism into the hands of his readers. But there is, then, something suspicious about his use of the equivalent of fairytales – for instance, the Egg of

Creation – in the context of scientific discovery. What, exactly, was he trying to accomplish?

Behrendt’s discussion of the power of poetry is relevant here:

Poetry’s great strength, historically and actually, has to do with its power to move and

evoke, to manipulate how the reader responds to its subject matter. The most effective

poetry appeals to the reader’s instinctive desire to participate with the author in the

“making” of the work, a process that reduces the separation between author (and the

author’s character or personae and what they say) and reader in a manner analogous to

the reduction of distance . . . Polwhele and his like worry that readers will so fully

sympathize with what is conveyed in the text’s words that they will be unable – or

unwilling – to distinguish their own ideas from those which the author has embedded in

the text. The logical consequence is that such readers will come to regard the words – and

the Radical ideas – contained in the text as ideas and impressions which they, rather than

the author, have produced. The reader will in this scenario find in the text reinforcement

for impressions – and convictions – which that reader will be seduced into believing are

his or his own; they will seem to come from within the reader rather than from without.

The text becomes verification, not suggestion, casting the reader rather than the author in

the role of sower of Radical seed. It is against just this sort of rhetorical seduction that the

establishment and its spokespersons direct their fire. (Behrendt, 89)

The apparent union between mythology and science in Darwin’s poetry can come off as a way of undermining religious faith while making science seem innocuous. Darwin’s encouragement to a

46 mixed audience of laymen to think for themselves – his speakers frequently call upon readers to prove him wrong, to deem his words inappropriate – can seem a bit disingenuous. He presents his audience with masses of scientific references of which they may have no prior knowledge, and he is not physically present to elucidate difficult material or clarify meaning. His provision of references is certainly performative to some extent: it shows that disagreeing with him will take some concerted effort. But it seems extraordinarily unlikely that he would go into such great detail if he thinks that readers are incapable of understanding the material to some degree, and if he does not want them to engage with it and form judgments. In any case, for male and female readers who are ordinarily disenfranchised to find the encouragement and resources to begin to educate themselves in the pages of a learned man’s poems would be affirming.

As St Clair tells us,

During the four centuries when printed paper was the only means by which complex texts

could be carried in quantity across time and space, almost everyone believed that reading

had vital consequences. Reading, all were sure, shaped the knowledge, the beliefs, the

understanding, the opinions, the sense of identity, the loyalties, the moral values, the

sensibility, the memories, the dreams, and therefore, ultimately, the actions, of men,

women, and children. Reading helped to shape mentalities and to determine the fate of

the nation. (1)

We can be sure of this much: that “printed texts are the products of their times as well as helping to shape them” (St Clair, 7); “authors have potential readers in mind when they write” (7);

“readers bring expectations to their reading” (7); and “the environment in which ideas prosper and perish is itself, to a large extent, an outcome of mental factors, including reading” (7). Over a longer period of time, “the notion of a national or ‘group’ culture” (7) ensures “a large measure

of shared stability, as well as development, across the generations” (7). Toward the end of the

eighteenth century, the number of people – of men, women, and children – who could, and did,

read “printed texts” (10) began to grow at a phenomenal rate (10). There “was still a large gap

between the nation as a whole and the literate nation, and another gap between the literate nation

and the reading nation” (266-677). However, readers with low incomes were no longer limited to

“the English-language Bible, short chapbooks, and ballads” (11) – they could read “book-length literary texts” (11). They could also pursue “extensive reading” (11) instead of “intensive reading” (11), reading poem after novel after whatever else rather than giving much attention to any single text, though that was still done. In short, they had more options and better access than ever before. Consequently there were worries over their reading choices and practices (11).

Women, especially, were thought “liable to become literature abusers, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and societies at large” (281), but there was also the fear of “a resurgence of the political philosophies and egalitarian ideals that had inspired the revolution in France” (308). As Seamus Deane explains,

The contrast between 1688 and 1789 was as telling as the contrast between the English

and French treatment of dissenting intellectuals. Reverence for religion, respect for

tradition, affection for the places and people of one’s locality, sexual fidelity, reluctance

to change, contempt for fashion, suspicion of brilliance, a sober dullness – these were the

well-known English virtues, for every one of which the French had a corresponding vice.

Even here there was a sexual differentiation: the French character was at root effeminate,

the English manly.24

That effeminate character was given a face: “The New Woman, a scandalous figure, was

24 Seamus Deane, The French Revolution and Enlightenment in England, 1789-1832 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 12.

French, intellectual, and lascivious” (Deane, 34). In contrast, a (presumably) feminine “loyalty to hearth and home” (34) rounded out the manly character of England. Burke considered the

“denial of religion” (9) as precipitating a “corruption of natural affection” (9), which was akin to

“the sexual seduction of . . . female pupils [by] gallants” (9). As Sarah Ellenzweig’s study of libertinism suggests, the shift from religion to sexual morality was neither a way of illustrating the hazards of intellectual thought in more or less uncontroversial terms, nor was it incidental:

Though studies of Restoration England generally understand libertinism to signify

promiscuous or free sexuality, in the period the term also denoted a challenge to orthodox

religion. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), “libertinism” indicates “the

views or practice of a libertine in religious matters, freedom of opinion or non-

recognition of authority as to religion; freethinking.” The sexual definition then follows:

“disregard of moral restraint, especially in relations between the sexes; licentious or

dissolute practices or habits of life.”25

There were, of course, “books of advice on what to read” and “how to read” (St Clair,

395), but there were also attempts at fixing prices (309), the window tax (310), and other forms of “textual control” (311), such as “the Seditious Societies Act of 1799” (311), which “was designed to prevent the circulation of ‘cheap publications adapted to influence and pervert the public mind” (311), and which involved a printing press and client registry (311). In spite of such measures, readers were undeniably an “increasingly literate and economically viable public of consumers” (Behrendt, 14). Their literacy brought them newfound “power and prerogative” (15); it gave them the benefits of “patronage” (14), of buying books and supporting ideas and being involved in that process of maintenance and reform to which St Clair refers.

25 Sarah Ellenzweig, The Fringes of Belief: English Literature, Ancient Heresy, and the Politics of Freethinking, 1660-1760 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 15. 49

As for the texts that they read, these needed to be both “readable and engaging”

(Behrendt, 15) to succeed, and, indeed, their often “innovatory nature” (15) “effectively democratized language” (15). Behrendt notes that many radical publishers had “ties with the

Dissenters” (15), for example, Johnson; and that, while Johnson was not the most radical publisher in London, he was taking chances (15). As Gerald P. Tyson indicates, Johnson published Darwin’s Botanic Garden (both parts) and The Temple of Nature, as well as the medical treatise Zoonomia, agricultural treatise Phytologia, and educational treatise A Plan for the Conduct of Female Education in Boarding Schools.26 The Botanic Garden was a particularly

“large sale” (Tyson, 111). Accordingly, Johnson published seven editions of it between 1789 and

1806: these include the 1791 quarto edition, which is a deluxe edition (Hall, 166), and the

“elegant” (Tyson, 110) 1806 edition, Darwin’s Poetical Works, for which engravings were redone (Hall, 166). Tyson also tells us that The Botanic Garden did so well because of the reading public’s “passion for science” (111), and this is undoubtedly part of the truth of the matter, but it is not the whole of it. Readers of the lower-middle and upper-working classes were not normally classically educated (15). Darwin’s poetry not only worked around that impediment, it also helped to redress it. Linnaean botany became accessible to all kinds of readers through Darwin’s use of the English language instead of Latin, and poetry instead of scientific papers. But, the question remains, was Darwin trying to erode faith?

Dissent’s Interest in Science and Commerce

Many Dissenters were active in economic public life through science, industry, and trade.

The Merton thesis – named for its originator, Robert K. Merton – holds that “Protestantism, and

26 Gerald P. Tyson, Joseph Johnson: A Liberal Publisher (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1979), 142. 50

specifically Puritanism, was a formative influence on the Scientific Revolution.”27 The deeper

question that it seeks to answer is this: “To what extent did the old Puritans turn their attention to science . . . because this interest was generated by their ethos, and to what extent was it the other way, with those having entered upon a career in science . . . subsequently finding the values of

Puritanism congenial?”28 In John Hedley Brooke’s summation of Merton’s analysis, “both

processes were at work” (28). John Money notes that “the connections between Dissent and

science were never constantly linear because the elements themselves were not immutably

constant,”29 and Brooke explains that because science was “one of the few doors open” (Brooke,

“Science and Dissent,” 22) to Dissenters, and because it might supply something like an

evidentiary basis for the basic tenets of their faith, it made sense that Dissenters would be drawn

to it. There was an added “religious motivation for scientific activity” (Brooke, “Science and

Dissent,” 22): beyond finding proofs for their beliefs as an end in and of itself, there was the

chance to justify Dissent to outsiders.

Priestley was raised as an Independent, attended Caleb Ashworth’s Daventry Academy

(Arminian), passed through Arianism and Socinianism, and arrived at Unitarianism, as “the more

rational and politically appealing religion” (White, 38). He did not believe in the Trinity or the

Atonement, and he derived his belief in determinism from Collins.30 For Priestley, “scientific

27 Paul Wood, Science and Dissent in England, 1688-1945 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 7. 28 John Hedley Brooke, “Science and Dissent: Some Historiographical Issues,” in Wood, Science and Dissent in England, 28. 29 John Money, “Science, Technology and Dissent in English Provincial Culture: from Newtonian Transformation to Agnostic Incarnation,” in Wood, Science and Dissent in England, 69. 30 J. M. Robertson, A History of Freethought Ancient and Modern to the Period of the French Revolution, vol. 2, 4th ed. (London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1969), 785. 51

progress was not merely a model but a vehicle for social and religious reform.”31 It “seemed to

show the transfer of power from God to the experimental philosopher” (Brooke, “Joining Natural

Philosophy,” 325), to support the idea of a “self-replenishing system designed to sustain human

life and promote human happiness” (325), to “eliminate superstition” (331) while being shaped

by religion simultaneously (331), a reciprocal process of honing reason and reaping the rewards.

In short, science was “a potent force for ridding the polity of arbitrary power, an established

church and popular superstition” (Brooke, “Science and Dissent,” 20), not faith. On the whole,

middle-class Dissent represented itself not only “as embracing and sustaining the spirit of 1688-

89 rather than 1649” (White, 43), it also placed a definite “emphasis on commercial progress”

(24), grounded in the advancement of science, as the way forward.

Johnson “left few letters and no documents that reveal his personal political or religious

beliefs” (Hall, 159). We know, however, that his family were Dissenters, more specifically,

General Baptists (Tyson, 7). Johnson left the faith gradually, between approximately 1754 and

1770 (7), and became a Unitarian sometime after meeting Priestley, in the 1760s (7). In the

1770s, the combination of Johnson’s “location and trade” (38), his reach as a London publisher

(38), and his own interests (38) made him an ideal campaigner for the Unitarian movement (38).

In 1771, he actively campaigned for the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts (39). He also

became the “official London publisher and distributor for the Unitarian Church and the

distributor of dissenting sermons and polemics” (Hall, 159). At the start of his career, Johnson

had concentrated primarily on Dissenting religious and theological texts, with only a secondary

interest in scientific texts (Tyson, 22). In the 1760s, he added travel books to his repertoire (28).

31 John Hedley Brooke, “Joining Natural Philosophy to Christianity: The Case of Joseph Priestley,” in Heterodoxy in Early Modern Science and Religion, eds. John Brooke and Ian Maclean (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 320. 52

In the late 1770s, as an established publisher, he began to pay “more attention to politics,

experimental science, literature, and art” (56). From 1788-95, he “consistently attacked political and social conservatism” (93). Johnson did not simply give a pre-existing market what it wanted.

Rather, he “wielded considerable power in shaping literary taste and directing trends” as “a patron” (xvii). One of his interests was promoting “inexpensive editions of literary and scientific writings, and religious and political pamphlets” (Hall, 159) – in other words, making knowledge accessible to as wide an audience as he could manage.

Both Johnson and his writers faced an old obstacle: the Blasphemy Act (1697) was still in force. As Isabel Rivers explains, it was aimed “specifically at Unitarians.”32 The Blasphemy Act

made it a punishable offence to deny that any person of the Trinity was God or to

maintain that there were more Gods than one, or to deny the truth of the Christian

religion or the divine authority of the Old and New Testaments. The punishment under

this act was disablement from public office for the first offence, and three years’

imprisonment for the second, though there seem to have been no convictions. The usual

punishment for blasphemy as a common law offence was fining or imprisonment. (The

death penalty for blasphemy was briefly brought in during the Commonwealth period but

not applied, and the old Act for burning heretics was finally repealed after the

Restoration.) (Rivers, 29)

The 1792 royal proclamation against seditious writings, 1794 Treason Trials, 1795 Gagging

Acts/ Treasonable Practices Act and Seditious Meetings Bill constituted the “legal harassment of

32 Isabel Rivers, Reason, Grace, and Sentiment: A Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England, 1660-1780, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 29. 53 radicals.”33 The Treason Trials reflected the government’s “anxiety to repress [religious and political] dissent in the wake of the French Revolution” (O’Flynn, 88). As O’Flynn explains,

“seen from that angle, much of the writing of the 1790s takes its origin not from the

‘spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’ hailed by Wordsworth’s famous remark about poetry but instead in the chronically stressed calculations of men and women about how much they could say without ending up in gaol” (89). During the proceedings, Paine was referred to as a “literary representative” (Garnai, 8) multiple times, emphasising “the way literature and literariness were already perceived as having a potent agency in the cultural climate” (8). With the Gagging Acts, “the act of writing itself” became suspect (8). From the perspective of the ruling elite, if texts could not be prevented from going to press, they could be chased down afterward.

Dissent and Deism were forced to become even more dissembling than they were already perceived to be, forced into inexactness in texts of a theological nature, and forced into the exploration of other kinds of text and modes of expression, which might afford them the means for suggesting powerfully what they could not state outright. The potential power of printed matter – of poems as well as pamphlets – to influence popular opinion – either sneakily or straightforwardly – was recognised, both by the governing elite, and by the campaigning minority of Dissent.

While it is possible, as some critics have suggested, that Darwin’s gestures towards God as the First Cause were nothing more or less than dissimulation – quite simply, that an atheist could not be an atheist in public, because if the establishment did not hunt him out, his “friends” would

– I consider the alternative possibility that they were instead indicative of his lifelong

33 Amy Garnai, Revolutionary Imaginings in the 1790s: Charlotte Smith, Mary Robinson, Elizabeth Inchbald (London: Palgrave, 2009), 7. 54

membership in the Dissenting community. Whatever he may have thought privately, his public

avowals of the existence of God served a purpose other than self-protection, or promoting

science for its own sake. If “the mainstream tradition of Dissent was attached to the idea of the

English national spirit” (Deane 159), it was because the Hanoverian (Protestant) succession

represented a promise (however poorly it happened to be kept) of religious toleration. Science

could, potentially, actually foster the religious toleration that had so far been denied to

Dissenters.

Attacking Dissent and Science: The Birmingham Riots

Priestley was also a member of The Revolution Society at Birmingham, which held a

dinner in honour of Bastille Day on 14 July 1791.34 That same night, the three-day Birmingham riots began. Although Priestley was not present at the dinner, his house was looted of “goods, scientific apparatus, books and papers” (King-Hele, Erasmus Darwin: A Life, 256). After the riots, Priestley was forced to leave Birmingham for London, and subsequently America, and the

Lunar Society suffered as a consequence (256). Darwin wrote about the riots in a letter to

Wedgwood:

The Birmingham riots are a disgrace to mankind. Active ignorance delights in depressing

the sciences they don’t understand. The Chancellor by promoting Dr Horsely for

answering Dr Priestly [sic] has set all the high Church Parsons on him, hoping for

Bishoppricks. Mr M — n burning Dr Priestley’s library to prevent a second paper-war

with him, is like our enemies sending an incendiary at the approach of a war and setting

34 Desmond King-Hele, Erasmus Darwin: A Life of Unequalled Achievement (London: DLM, 2007), 256. 55

fire to Portsmouth. He hopes to escape a drubbing, which I hope Dr P. will still give him

one.35

As Darwin saw it, the riots were not about persecuting people for their revolutionary beliefs alone. Why single out scientists, destroying their equipment, research, and gathering places, if not because one presumes that these are means by which dissent – religious and political – is sown? In other words, why target science if it really has nothing to do with religion one way or the other? Darwin also wrote to Priestley, on behalf of the Lunar Society of which they were both members:

We condole with yourself and with the scientific world on the loss of your valuable

library, your experimental apparatus, and your more valuable manuscripts . . . Almost all

great minds in all ages of the world, who have endeavoured to benefit mankind, have

been persecuted by them; Galileo for his philosophical discoveries was imprisoned by the

inquisition; and Socrates found a cup of hemlock his reward for teaching “there is one

God.” Your enemies, unable to conquer your arguments by reason, have had recourse to

violence. . . Your philosophical friends therefore hope that you will not risk your person

amongst a people, whose bigotry renders them incapable of instruction: they hope you

will leave the unfruitful fields of polemical theology, and cultivate that philosophy of

which you may be called the father; and which, by inducing the world to think and

reason, will silently marshall mankind against delusion, and with greater certainty

overturn the empire of superstition.36

35 Erasmus Darwin to Josiah Wedgwood, 25 July 1791, in The Collected Letters of Erasmus Darwin, ed. Desmond King-Hele (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 386. 36 Erasmus Darwin to Joseph Priestley, 3 September 1791, in The Collected Letters of Erasmus Darwin, 387-88. 56

Darwin’s advice to Priestley – to avoid posing reasonable arguments to unreasonable people, to focus on doing science, and to teach the world “to think and reason” by that means – is key to understanding his poetry’s treatment of science.

For Darwin the riots sent a clear smoke signal. Britain’s brief flirtation with the French

Revolution was over; soon it was to be “Church and King for ever” and to hell with

liberty. From now onwards Darwin grew more cautious in publishing radical opinions,

though it was too late to tone down the enthusiasm for the French Revolution expressed

in his poem. (King-Hele, Erasmus Darwin: A Life, 257)

My view is that Darwin and Johnson dated the first edition of The Botanic Garden “1791” to

hallmark a significant event, but also to situate Darwin’s project. In 1789, there was expectation.

In the end, there was still hope. Darwin’s primary objective was to teach his readers botany, a rudimentary science. If they learned to think and reason along the way, then slogans such as

“Church and King for ever” as well as flowers would be susceptible of scrutiny. Put simply, critical thinking and rational decision making would replace uncritical acceptance.

(Anti-) Revolutionary Times

Whereas The Loves of the Plants and The Economy of Vegetation were popular, The

Temple of Nature was reviled. The public taste for anything can change for all sorts of reasons.

In poetry, as in all things, timing counts for a great deal. While Darwin’s poems were going to press, being sold, and being read, the world outside their pages was in turmoil. There was the

French Revolution, first looming on the horizon and suggestive of new possibilities for governance, and gradually coming to represent the hazards of chipping away at the foundations of known society. There was yet another war between England and France, and the kind of demoralisation that goes hand-in-hand with any apparently eternal conflict between two

societies. There were also pre-existing, rising, domestic tensions over Dissent because it

represented a significant body politic. The persistence of Dissent showed that any notion of a

single national religion, let alone one that could withstand the test of time better than (as it

seemed) Catholicism had done in France, was naive. Dissent’s strong presence in science was

also worrisome – would Dissenting science affect the wider public’s view of God and

governance? The world represented within the pages of Darwin’s poems would have attracted

the attention of many more readers than strictly literary ones precisely because of its varied

pertinences to current affairs and issues.

The timing of Darwin’s poems coincides most obviously with key events in French

political history. The first edition of The Loves of the Plants was published only a few months

prior to what British Marxist historian George Rudé deems the signal event of what we call the

French Revolution: the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789.37 Shortly thereafter, the

Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, on 27 August 1789 (Rudé,

106). The Civil Constitution of the Clergy followed, in 1790 (116). As I noted above, the first

edition of The Botanic Garden (i.e., the third edition of The Loves of the Plants and the first

edition of The Economy of Vegetation) is misdated “1791.” The misdating may have been

accidental, or it may have been intentional. At any rate, 1791 was an important year in France:

the Civil Constitution of the Clergy was rejected (118), and the first written Constitution was

adopted (108). Then followed the Revolutionary Wars, beginning in 1792; the sans-culotte movement or peasant uprising of 1793 (222); the introduction of the new Jacobin Constitution of

1793 (119), which was placed in “cold storage” almost immediately and later repealed (298);

Robespierre’s Reign of Terror, 1793-94 (122), and the execution of the king; and Bonaparte’s

37 George Rudé, Revolutionary Europe, 1783-1815 (London: Fontana, 1964), 96. 58

Concordat of 1801, which “re-established on new foundations” “the old [Catholic] Church”

(118). Just two years later, The Temple of Nature was published. By 1803, the revolution had come full circle: things were at least as bad as they had been before, and perhaps even worse.

All the while that French history was unfolding, England was watching. What did foreign history in the making have to do with England, let alone Darwin’s poetry? As Rudé indicates, any nation needs

more than economic hardship, social discontent, and the frustration of political and social

ambitions to make a revolution. To give cohesion to the discontents and aspirations of

widely varying social classes there had to be some unifying body of ideas, a common

vocabulary of hope and protest, something, in short, like a common “revolutionary

psychology.” (Rudé, 74)

In France,

The ground was prepared, in the first place, by the writers of the Enlightenment. It was

they, as Burke and Tocqueville both noted, who weakened the ideological defences of the

Old Regime. The ideas of Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau, and those of many

others, were . . . being widely disseminated and absorbed by an eager reading public, both

aristocratic and middle class. It had become fashionable, even among the clergy, to be

sceptical and “irreligious”; and the writings of Voltaire had combined with the struggles

within the Church itself (Gallicans against Jesuits, Richerists and Jansenists against the

increasing authority of the bishops) to expose the Church to indifference, contempt or

hostility. (74-75)

In terms of the necessary motivation for a revolution, England lacked a well unified vocabulary on which to base collective action. Hope and protest were facing in two different directions, the

one toward tradition, the other toward change. Over time, the French Revolution itself cast

change in a negative light. While there was an eager reading public, it was hardly of a piece to begin with, and it was hardly pro-revolutionary by 1803.

Madness and Despotism

Of primary concern to most English around the time of the onset of the French Revolution

was the problem of how to respond to a possibly despotic government without resorting to

rebellion (either on a small scale, or on the scale of a full-blown revolution). Rebellion was the

last resort, and the situation in England was not necessarily that grim, at least compared to that in

France. In contrast to Louis XVII, George III was generally well liked – but he was also

obviously ill. His behaviour had become increasingly erratic and unpredictable over a period of

time. In fact, as David Andress notes, “from the summer of 1788 onwards,”38 there were

concerns over his kingship. George was “degenerat[ing] towards mania” (Andress, 111). On 3

December 1788, when his Privy Council questioned his doctors under oath, they confirmed his

“complete incapacity” (112), but they were also optimistic that he “would recover” (112).

George had earlier prorogued Parliament until 20 November (112), and so its members were

forced to open session “without formal authority” (113), on 4 December; this was a minor act of

rebellion in and of itself.

They accepted that they could not pass any legislation, but “the two chambers of the Lords

and Commons agreed to form committees to examine the doctors further” (Andress, 113). Once

more, the doctors confirmed that the king’s condition was serious (113). On the same day, Prime

Minister Pitt wrote, “the Opinion of the Physicians is very favourable as to the Prospect of

Recovery” (114). Others were less inclined to take that opinion seriously. On 10 December, “the

38 David Andress, 1789: The Threshold of the Modern Age (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009), 111. 60 explosive matter of how to rule a kingdom with an insane king burst upon the floor of the

Commons” (113). In the main, Opposition Whigs believed that the king’s condition was permanent, and that the Pittite Tories were insisting on his eventual recovery in order to buy themselves time (113). In short, the Tories were, potentially, despots – remaining in power in the virtual absence of a king, and effectively answering to no one at all. Around 8 November 1788,

Sheridan had begun negotiations to allow the Whigs to assume power, with him at their head

(113). Fox had his choice of aiding Sheridan in his pursuit of power, or of helping the Prince of

Wales to take the throne. On 10 December 1788, Fox “opened with the claim of his patron, the

Prince of Wales, to ‘express a right to assume the reins of government and exercise the power of sovereignty’ as if his father had ‘undergone a natural and perfect demise’” (114). Fox’s show of support for such action was tantamount to treason. Pitt therefore called for a debate “over the

‘right and duty’ of Parliament to determine the correct course of action” (115) on 16 December, his “time-wasting measures were approved by a majority over sixty, and the rest of the year would be spent in technical debates” (116). While Pitt pondered the logistics and legitimacy of a

Regency Bill, George III’s health began to improve. He showed some signs of recovery on 2

February 1789 (212). As he continued to return to physical and mental normalcy, “celebrations grew, climaxing in a grand service of thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral in London on St

George’s Day, 23 April 1789” (218).

The Loves of the Plants was received by the Stationer’s Register on 6 February 1789

(Tyson, 110), just a few days after the king’s first show of improved health. It was published sometime in April. I cannot find a precise date, but I presume that a recovery was expected if not confirmed by the time that the poem appeared in print. The storming of the Bastille took place just a few months later. Generally, England as a reading public would have been sympathetic to

the situation in France, in light of not only her own recent troubles with a king, but also the

happy end of them (at least for the rest of the century).

The Revolutionary Wars

Over time, however, sympathy for the Revolution faded. Sir George Clark provides a

synopsis of England’s involvement in the Revolutionary Wars. In 1792, “France was at war with

both Austria and Prussia, and the French successfully invaded the Austrian Netherlands, the

region which could be regarded as the natural frontier of England.”39 By declaring navigation of the River Scheldt open, France defied the Treaties of Utrecht (Clark, 200); this decree violated

“the sovereignty of the Dutch republic” (200), and it put Great Britain at risk of “commercial and strategic dangers” (200). The Edict of Fraternity followed. It “promised friendship and assistance to all people wishing to recover their liberty” (200); the edict put Great Britain at risk of an invasion by France, along with any colonial “collaborators” (200) that might be enticed by the carrot of liberty to help her. Pitt’s government openly opposed the decree and the edict, refusing to “negotiate for a settlement in the Netherlands” (200) until such time as they were revoked. In consequence, “France declared war against the two members of the triple alliance of 1788 who were still neutral, Great Britain and the Dutch Republic” (200). The first revolutionary war ran from 1793 to 1802, when “the peace was made by the Treaty of Amiens” (205) – briefly.

Because “the treaty left French power on the mainland untouched” (205), because “Bonaparte refused to discuss commercial relations, let alone to revive the Eden Treaty” (205), because

“British seaborne commerce actually began to decline” (205), and because Bonaparte “used diplomatic pressure . . . to exploit the advantages which he had gained in the war” (205) both before and after signing the Treaty of Amiens (205), England opted to declare war on France

39 Sir George Clark, The Illustrated History of Britain (New York: British Heritage Press, 1983), 200. 62

later in the same year. Pitt died in 1805, and Fox, who was, at that time, Foreign Secretary, tried

and failed to make peace with France (205). In total, the “Napoleonic war” (205) took almost

fourteen years to resolve (207).

The madness of King George III and the Revolutionary Wars partially obscure a deeper,

related, issue – one that has received less critical attention, though it had more of an influence on

how the English perceived the French Revolution: religion. As Albert Elmer Hancock describes

the French Revolution, it was “an endeavour to disentangle human life from the coils of an

intricate and artificial social system, and to re-establish society upon a simple and natural

basis.”40 It “proposed a certain end: a change in the constitution of society which should ameliorate the earthly condition of man and insure him against the oppression of despotic rulers”

(Hancock, 3). Simple and natural versus intricate and artificial; “the earthly condition of man”

versus any other condition of man; insurance against oppression, despotism: this is all suggestive

of a secular conception of how society ought to be constructed. As Michaelson explains, though,

England was not that kind of a society. Whereas the French Revolution was “predominantly

secular” (Michaelson, 28), “most political beliefs had a religious component” (28) in England, and this is what gave them their coherency. Tory beliefs, for example, were grounded in a conservative “political theology” (28), namely, Anglicanism; within such a framework, they had the (superficial) appearance of a moral justification. However, even within the Anglican/

Established Church, there were two schools of thought: that of the High Church, and that of the

Low/ Moderate/ Latitudinarian Church. Tories tended to be High Churchmen; Whigs, Low

Churchmen. In addition, there were numerous Dissenting Protestant faiths, whose members tended to embrace Whiggism. While the majority view was Anglican and Tory “in fact if not in

40 Albert Elmer Hancock, The French Revolution and the English Poets: A Study in Historical Criticism (Kennikat: Port Washington, 1967), 3. 63 name” (28; referencing the work of J. C. D. Clark), there was significant room for (external) opposition and (internal) political and religious dissension.

The Politics of Dissent

The madness of King George III and the Catholicism of King Louis XVI brought England in mind of her own revolution of 1688, the various events leading up to it, and what it had ultimately made possible. Leading up to 1688, there had been two civil wars; Cromwell’s

Interregnum; the succession of James II/VII; and the Monmouth Rebellion. During the civil wars

(1642-47 and 1648-49), English and Scottish Parliaments had fought against Charles I’s extreme religious policies, and for a constitutional monarchy (Clark). Charles was beheaded in 1649, and his son, Charles II, was prevented from assuming the throne until 1660 (the Restoration). During the Interregnum, i.e., the period between reigns, England was a republican commonwealth, over which Cromwell ruled as Lord Protector. In February 1685, Charles II’s brother James II/VII assumed the throne, and the Monmouth Rebellion followed.

As William Gibson explains, the succession of James, who was a Catholic, renewed old fears over national religious policies.41 More particularly, “fears of aggressive Catholic policies”

(Gibson, 136) were “the occasion of violence between Taunton’s Anglicans and

Nonconformists” (136), Taunton being “the bastion of [early modern] Dissent and of anti-

Catholic feeling” (136), and were also “sufficient to encourage Charles II’s illegitimate son, the

Duke of Monmouth, to seek to challenge James’s succession” (136). The Monmouth Rebellion took place in June 1685 (137). Despite “a stubborn sense that God was lighting the way for the opponents of a Catholic king” (148), the rebellion was not a success. James II’s “first

Declaration of Indulgence at Easter 1687 dispensing with penal laws against Catholics and

41 William Gibson, Religion and the Enlightenment, 1600: 1800: Conflict and the Rise of Civic Humanism in Taunton (Peter Lang: Oxford, 2007), 136. 64

Dissenters [was] a vain attempt to create religious toleration for all as a smoke-screen for

Catholic relief” (154). The Glorious Revolution of 1688 involved support for a Dutch Protestant,

William of Orange (James’ nephew), and his wife, Mary (James’ eldest daughter). (155) James ultimately fled the country (156). Parliament ceded to pressures and “declared that [he] had abdicated and that William and Mary were condominious monarchs” (157). In other words,

William and Mary were to rule together, and they did so until her death, in 1694. William III continued to rule until his death in 1701. Mary’s sister Anne ruled from 1702-1714, when she died. The 1701 Act of Settlement had determined that the throne would pass to Sophia of

Hanover (one of James’ I’s granddaughters) or her offspring after Anne’s death. In 1714,

Sophia’s son George became the first of the Hanoverian Georges.

Andress highlights the connection between the Glorious Revolution and Fox’s support for the Prince of Wales. Fox’s speech took place on 10 December 1788, the centenary of the day that

William had “defeated royal forces in the battle of Reading” (Andress, 114), “mak[ing] the irony even more delicious” (114). Fox’s support for the Prince of Wales “made a blatant claim on the divine right of kings” (114) – for, regardless of George’s mental issues, the right to rule was still his alone until his death – and even hearkened back to the deposing of James II. Fox attracted support from a notable minority (however short-lived that support was to be): Dissenters.

Seventeenth-century Dissenters had regarded the Revolution as glorious: for one thing, it rid the country of a Catholic king and replaced him with a Protestant one; for another, “William was a

Lutheran . . . though he conformed to the Church of England” (Gibson 157). He was therefore

“naturally sympathetic to Dissenters” (157), and remained so after his conversion to Anglicanism

(157). For eighteenth-century Dissenters, however, liberty was still on the horizon.

The Repeal Campaign of 1787-91

Robert M. Ryan discusses “the campaign for religious liberty being waged throughout the

country by Protestant Dissenters and the remarkable nationwide rebirth of Christian faith and

piety that became known as the Evangelical Revival.”42 He deems the campaign and rebirth of

faith and piety as the key factors in what he calls “the British counter-revolution” (Ryan, 21) of

the 1790s. The Dissenting “repeal campaign” (24) actually “predate[d] the French Revolution”

(21). From 1787-1791 (19), Dissenters – both Orthodox and Heterodox (24) – “joined forces in

three successive, increasingly militant attempts to win parliamentary appeal of the discriminatory

laws under which they suffered” (19). Historically, Nonconformists/ Dissenters had been the

targets of several acts. Those instituted before 1789 are as follows: the Act for Confirming and

Restoring Ministers, 1660; the Corporation Act, 1661; the Act for the Uniformity of Public

Prayers, 1662; the Conventical Act, 1664; the Five-Mile Act, 1665; the Test Act, 1672; the

Blasphemy Act, 1697; the Occasional Conformity Act, 1711; and the Schism Act, 1714. Seed deems it “worth sketching the main outlines of anti-Dissenting legislation” (3); I agree, and I will depend largely on his sketch here. The Act for Confirming and Restoring Ministers “set about restoring loyalist clergymen who had lost their church livings under the Commonwealth. In addition, any clergymen who had petitioned for the trial of Charles I, had opposed the restoration of Charles II or who had publicly pronounced against infant baptism was to be summarily ejected” (Seed, 3). The Act for the Uniformity of Public Prayers

required all clergy of the Church of England, all fellows of colleges at Oxford and

Cambridge, all schoolmasters and private tutors, to sign a declaration renouncing

resistance to the crown or its agents, refusing any obligations incurred under the Solemn

42 Robert M. Ryan, The Romantic Reformation: Religious Politics in English Literature, 1789-1824 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 18. 66

League and Covenant of 1643 and promising conformity to a revised and profoundly

anti-puritan liturgy. Any minister failing to comply with these terms by St

Bartholomew’s Day, 24 August 1662, was to be deprived of his living. If he was

subsequently to preach, he would be liable to prosecution and imprisonment for three

months. The effect of these two Acts was the resignation or expulsion of around 1, 800

clergymen from their livings and of some 150 college fellows and schoolmasters from

their positions. (4)

The Corporation Act “laid down that nobody could be elected to a Corporation or serve in any office unless they took Communion according to the rites of the Church of England” (4), the

Conventicle Act “prohibited any meeting for Dissenting worship of more than four persons” (4), and the Five-Mile Act “prohibited any Dissenter from teaching or from coming within five miles of a city or corporate town or borough, unless he had sworn a specified oath of allegiance” (4).

Although Dissent was “legally secured” (128) through Lord Mansfield in 1667, it had, as it were, little more than the right to be thought of privately. The Test Act further “required anyone taking up any kind of civil or military office to receive within three months the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England” (4). The Acts affected Dissenters “during the reigns of

Charles II and James II” (4), though enforcement was “inconsistent” (4) and “on occasion effectively resisted” (4).

James II's Declaration of Indulgence of 1687 appeared to indulge Dissent, but it potentially indulged Catholicism under that guise (Gibson, 158). William III’s Toleration Act of 1689

“permitted Trinitarian Dissenters to obtain licenses for meeting houses from diocesan bishops”

(158). As such, it was “the principal means of legitimising Dissenting worship” (158), and it also

“gave an enormous boost to the Dissenting academies” (158). Moreover, it “mark[ed] a

recognition, grudging on the part of many churchmen, that a single, uniform, national church

could not be imposed on the whole population” (Seed, 5). However, “the Test and Corporation

Acts remained in force, as did the penalties against non-Trinitarian Dissenters” (Gibson, 157).

The Test Act “required all holders of specified offices to undertake an annual test of orthodoxy in the form of receipt of communion in an Anglican church” (118). Whereas the Corporation Act

“had required all members of municipal corporations to conform to the Church of England”

(118), the Test Act “extended the requirement to all office-holders under the crown, and imposed an oath against transubstantiation” (118). Beyond that, “religious worship could take place only in a building which was registered with a local bishop or magistrate. At the same time they were liable to church rates and tithes for the maintenance of the parish church. Ministers were required to subscribe to all but five of the thirty-nine Articles and were required to swear an oath of allegiance” (Seed, 5). The sum total of the “measures passed in the aftermath of the ‘Great

Rebellion’ remained on the statute books until well into the nineteenth century” (3). As Seed makes clear, there were “regular Acts of Indemnity” (6) and “many local bodies and commissions were not subject to the Test and Corporation Acts” (6). However, keeping the measures on the books gave state sanction to viewing Dissenters as the equivalent of seventeenth-century Nonconformists, as though neither of those groups were mixed or mutable

(3). It provided “hostile governments or organisations” with tools for further subjection (6), and it (re-) generated “political disaffection for an established order which continued to maintain that historical injustice” (6), i.e., being treated collectively as anti-monarchists at best, and potential regicides at worst. In actuality, seventeenth-century Nonconformists were predominantly pro- monarchists, and it was not Presbyterians, but rather Episcopalians, who started the war.43

43 Robert E. Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley: A Study of his Life and Work from 68

New acts were instituted post-1689, pre-1789. The Occasional Conformity Act and Schism

Act “struck at core freedoms of Dissenters” (Seed 6). The former “prevented Dissenters from taking communion in the Church of England to qualify for public office” (Gibson, 181), which was simultaneously contrary to one’s conscience and a useful loophole. The latter “sought to prevent Dissenters from educating their children outside the Church of England” (181) and would “effectively [have] shut down Dissenting academies” (228). Following the death of Queen

Anne in 1714, “punitive legislation against Dissenters passed in her reign was repealed” (Seed

6). But the Corporation and Test Acts remained. Dissenters were “largely excluded . . . from the universities and from ecclesiastical, military, and political avenues of advancement within the

English establishment” (White, 67) because of the Corporation and Test Acts. They were, therefore, “a subcategory of the classical public sphere” (67). At the same time, however, they were “a fragment that exerted critical pressure from within” (67) with some success. Dissenters

“participated – and saw themselves as participating – in the centers of economic and cultural public life. The legal status of nonconformity gave added impetus to their engagement with public opinion, and their sphere of intervention was thus by necessity an intermediate space between the private realm and the state” (67). Dissenters needed to downplay their denominational divisions and dissent together, challenging the legal limitations that were imposed on them, through the means available to them. Despite doctrinal differences between

Dissenting sects, they shared some basic values, and a heritage of persecution on the basis of those values; hence they were able to present a more or less united front. “To be a Dissenter”

(Seed, 7) was first and foremost a cultural construction. It was “to belong to an embattled minority” (7), one who “lived in thought . . . with those who had borne testimony of a good

1773 to 1804 (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 274. 69

conscience” (quoting Hazlitt; 189). Dissenters accepted, as a part of their heritage, having taken political actions which were construable as beneficial to England as a whole in the final analysis

(i.e., to the extent that they had made the Act of Settlement possible); this gave them a rhetorical

starting-point for any debate that they chose to join or provoke. They had, in total, “a

denominational ‘we’” (187), “a much wider Dissenting ‘we’” (187), and a “national ‘we’” (187).

For

at pivotal moments in the history of England – Tudor Reformation, English Civil War,

Restoration, Glorious Revolution, the Hanoverian Succession – the Puritans or the

Dissenters were decisively involved. No national history could omit them. But . . . a

whole series of national histories, most importantly Clarendon's History of the Rebellion

and Hume's History of England, had represented their role as negative, even pathological.

Any Dissenting history had to confront and challenge this dominant narrative and

produce a counter-narrative in which the Puritans and their Dissenting heirs were

defended against false accusations and were demonstrated to have played a positive role.

(187)

As Locke had anticipated would happen, Dissenters were made one “party” (6) by their

persecution – not an official political party, but a single group with political clout. White

summarises, “On the one hand, Dissenters were divided by their characteristic differences of

faith and practice, but on the other, they were united by their self-defined, libertarian principles of separation [i.e., from Anglicanism]” (11). Whig beliefs, which were relatively liberal, tended to mesh well with Dissenting values. Of course, one's religion did not necessarily determine one's politics. Not all Tories were Anglicans, not all Whigs were Dissenters, and party allegiances could change. In 1783-84, Dissent abandoned the Foxite Whigs en masse, and

aligned with Shelburne and Pitt (Seed 166). Fox lost the bulk of his supporters, and he lost the

election (166). Campaigns to repeal the acts in 1717-18, the 1730s, and 1787-90 failed. Although

the Dissenting public sphere was powerful, it was also “rapidly disintegrating” (White, 13). Circa

the mid-1790s, it had “begun to dissipate” (87), and it did not “project such a coherent public

front again until the renewed outburst of propaganda against the Corporation and Test Acts in the

1820s” (87); the acts were repealed in 1828 (87).

The Revolution Debate

By 1789, the repeal campaign had already “generated . . . an urgent re-examination of the nation’s religious character, helping to create a national climate of intellectual unrest, of spiritual dissatisfaction and inquiry and desire” (Ryan, 24). Rational Dissenter Richard Price presented his

Discourse on the Love of Our Country on 4 November 1789 (22). Price was “at a meeting of a society founded to commemorate the English Revolution of 1688” (22). His “discourse . . . provoked Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France and on Proceedings in

Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event” (22). Hence “literary historian H. N.

Brailsford designated November 4th, 1789 [,] as the beginning of the French Revolution in

England” (22). To put it less bluntly, it was the beginning of the Revolution Debate in England.

As Seed describes the Revolution Debate, it was more than simply an investigation into foreign

affairs – it was

a debate about history. It was, in key respects, initiated by the Dissenters in their

campaigns against the Test and Corporation Acts which refocused public attention in the

late 1780s on these survivals of Stuart England. The Revolution debate was an argument

about the meaning of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and behind that the English

revolution – or the “great rebellion” – of the 1640s. It was an argument about the

similarities and differences between English and French history. And it was an argument

about history itself, about the relations between present and past, about the extent of the

former's debt to the latter, about the pertinence of historical identities, about ancestors

and genealogies. It was also, finally, a contest over the control of the nation's political

memory. The Revolution Society was commemorating and seeking to institutionalise an

alternative historical perspective on the seventeenth century. (Seed, 185)

There were four “crucial formative events” (Ryan, 3) of the seventeenth century in England.

They were “the Elizabethan Settlement, the Civil War, the Revolution of 1688, and the

Hanoverian Succession” (3). Ryan describes them as “religious crises whose resolution contributed essential components of what is called the British Constitution in Church and State”

(3). Viewed through the lens of those religious crises, the French Revolution had a triple significance to the English (which refers for the moment to an undifferentiated citizenry). In the first place, it constituted the successful overthrow of a Catholic monarchy – pleasing to English

Protestants of all stripes. Deane discusses the relative impact on the two major camps, the Tories

/ High Churchmen and Whigs / Low Churchmen. For the latter, the French Revolution had the appearance of “the belated counterpart of 1688” (Deane, 4), that is, the Glorious Revolution, through which England had secured a Protestant succession (the Hanoverian succession). For

Tories / High Churchmen, however, “it was tempting to compare the relatively peaceful English revolution of 1688 with the increasingly sanguinary character of 1789 and to derive from that a detailed account of the essentially stable and traditional features of the English system” (2). The comparison was compelling. As the French Revolution continued, Whigs as well as Tories perceived its character as being equally un-English as it was irreligious.

In the Tory/ High Church view, Dissent and Deism appeared as “Jacobin”: promoting

near-atheism at best, and actual atheism at worst, anti-monarchism (supposed disbelief in God

extending logically to disbelief in the divine right of kings to rule), and loose sexual conduct

(apparently absent any moral superstructure) to the general reading public, including women.

The purported fear was that the public might be led astray unwittingly, mistaking propaganda for poetry. The French Revolution made “all social structures seem vulnerable to change” (Ryan,

18). If secularists could revolt against Catholicism in France, then Dissenters could revolt against

Anglicanism in England – and Dissenters constituted an ample portion of the population.

Dissenters took the long view of their involvement in the Elizabethan Settlement, the Civil War

of 1649, the Revolution of 1688, and the Hanoverian Succession: the final outcome provided the

justification. While they had been thrilled at the successful “defiance of the established political

and ecclesiastical order” (25) of a neighbouring nation, “the mainstream tradition of Dissent was

attached to the idea of the English national spirit” (Deane, 159). The French Revolution showed

that successful defiance came at a cost that was too high to pay: the very national unity which

Dissenters craved.

The leading figure in the mainstream tradition of Dissent was Priestley. He held a

“philosophy of individualism” (Deane, 160). As Deane explains, according to that philosophy,

one was “free from public interference but contributed to public happiness by conforming to the

requirements of Christian morality” (160), and was to judge the government based on its “public

utility” and one’s “own conscience” (160). Priestley came to regard the Revolution “as a disaster

of biblical proportions” because of its “spirit of atheism” (162), the particular “nature” (163) of

which “Catholicism” (163) had purportedly shaped. Along with Priestley, Dissenters took a

decisive step away from the Revolution, yet they became emblematic of the potential for a

revolution in England.

The British Constitution in Church and State functioned thus: “Christianity provided the central principal of cohesion in British society and the primary ideological rationale for submission to authority” (Ryan, 25). As Ryan clarifies, the government “depended on the

[Established] Church to ensure the subservience, if not the loyalty, of the people” (25). The laws that Dissenters sought to repeal helped to maintain the Established Church as the bedrock of

English society. Edmund Burke, for one, regarded Dissent as a “cabal of gifted intellectuals and propagandists whose disaffection had been universalized into a theoretical attack on the existing state of things” (14), and as “the vanguard of the philosophes in England” (14). The more general public fear was that repealing the laws would not simply give Dissenters their freedom, it would give everyone enough freedom with which to damn themselves, the freedom to “repudiate all religious affiliation” (28) – whether they chose to call themselves “Atheists” or “Deists.”

Deism

The “first explicit mention” (Robertson, 513) of Deism is “in the epistle dedicatory to the second and expanded edition of the Instruction Chretienne of the Swiss Protestant Viret (1563)”

(513). In the epistle, “professed deists are spoken of as a new species bearing a new name” (513).

Viret regarded Deists as they who “rejected all revealed religion, but called themselves deists by way of repudiating atheism; some keeping a belief in immortality, some rejecting it” (513); in other words, as atheists every one, whether or not they believed in immortality. In England,

Deism was developed and defined through the writings of Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury,

“the father of deism”44; Charles Blount; John Toland; Anthony Collins; Matthew Tindal;

Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury; Thomas Woolston; and Peter Annet. Toland,

Woolston, and Annet represent three generations of popular Deists (Herrick, 126).

44 Peter Gay, Deism: An Anthology (Princeton: D. Van Nostrand, 1968), 29. 74

Deism took its inspiration from the “English tradition of materialist thought” and the

“continental tradition of pantheism, which was capable of being interpreted in a materialist way

and which profoundly influenced Toland” (Rivers, Reason, Grace, and Sentiment, 21).

Pantheism was “the belief that God and nature are the same and that the universe is infinite and

eternal” (21), and Benedict de Spinoza and Giordano Bruno were its “principle exponents” (21).

Unlike the Deists, Socinians rejected materialism and pantheism (Robertson, 712), as did

“Scriptural Unitarians who thought with Newton and Locke” (712). Newton’s reliance upon

“experimental observation and mathematical generalization alone” (Gay 25) was “not a deist

tenet” (25), yet it “encouraged men to move in the direction of deism” (25). Locke’s belief that

“revelation is but reason extended” (25) provided the same kind of support. Rivers tells us that

Deists preferred the term “freethinker,” because it

suggests adherence not to a particular religious position or set of ethical tenets but to a

frame of mind and a method of enquiry. Collins defines freethinking as “The Use of the

Understanding, in endeavouring to find out the Meaning of any Proposition whatsoever,

in nature of the Evidence for or against it, and in judging of it according to the seeming

Force or Weakness of the Evidence.” (Rivers, 11; quoting from Free-Thinking).

Deism, in the ethos of Newton and Locke, made good sense. Circa 1710, the “pressure of deism on the popular creed evoked expressions of Arian and Socinian thought among the clergy”

(Robertson, 717). It was also possible for a person to be both a theistic Deist and a member of another faith (757). After 1750, the literary status of Deism was “higher than ever” (Robertson,

777).

A stereotype about Deism is that it “threatened British Christianity between 1680 and

1760” (Herrick, 205), and therefore effective British governance. In a way, however, Deism

75 provided Unitarianism with a bit of temporary shelter, as well as presumably weakening it, viz. making it more rational than it might otherwise have been: “Unitarianism, formerly a hated heresy, was now in comparison leniently treated, because of its deference to Scriptural authority”

(Robertson, 731). Whereas Deism “rejected all revelation, Unitarianism held to the Bible, calling only for a revision of the central Christian dogma” (731). Nonetheless, the laws remained in force and continued to apply to Unitarians as well as other Dissenters. In the 1720s, the “deistic movement was now in full flood” (Robertson, 736). This was the time of Shaftesbury’s

“optimistic deism” (736). By 1730, “many arguments on both sides of the Deist controversy had hardened into commonplaces” (Herrick, 19). The next decade was “a period of orthodox dominance” (20). In 1765, Diderot declared (on the authority of the Baron d’Holbach), “the

Christian religion is nearly extinct in England. The deists are innumerable; there are nearly no atheists; those who are so conceal it. An atheist and a deist are almost synonymous terms for them” (Robertson, 780) – in other words, a covert atheist was more apt to be masquerading as a

Deist than anything else. There were, of course, also those who concealed their beliefs altogether. Both Pitt and Fox are known to have been “agnostic deists” (791) – a term by which

Robertson suggests that they were only nominally theistic at best, and perhaps atheists. As for

“the radical deists” (Herrick, 21), they “remained prominent on the English religious stage until about 1770” (21). Between 1729 and 1770, there were three trials of Deists, all resulting in convictions (8).

During the French Revolution, the prevailing attitude towards Deists in England became one of fear and contempt:

The multitude of mediocre minds in the middle and upper classes, formerly deistic or

indifferent, took fright at unbelief as something now visibly connected with democracy

and regicide; new money endowments were bestowed on the Church; and orthodoxy

became fashionable on political grounds just as scepticism had become fashionable at the

Restoration. (Robertson, 795)

That fright – over the political ramifications of actual or imagined unbelief – is what drove the

"so-called English Terror" of the mid-1790s (White, 87), including late-century attacks on

Darwin’s poems. Darwin was perceived as “a dangerous unbeliever and materialist” because of his “irreligious and revolutionary sympathies.”45

Darwin reportedly was “converted to a materialistic philosophy by a study of [David]

Hartley.”46 It was Hartley who “argued that devotion to literature commonly fostered ‘scepticism

in religious matters’” (Robertson, 776-77; quoting from Observations on Man pt. 2, ch. III, sec.

Iii, prop. 56). But, “like Priestley, Darwin did not regard his materialism as incompatible with a

belief in god as the First Cause” (Wolf, 786-87). The latter claim is speculative: Darwin never made such an assertion. What we do know is that Darwin’s ideas were sometimes “too” materialistic for his peers. He “used Priestley’s ‘green matter’ as an example of . . . spontaneous generation, supported by observations of Jan Ingenhousz and Christoph Girtanner” (Schofield,

369). Darwin then “suggested that spontaneous vitality was the beginning of a perpetual development of beings by reproduction to larger and more complicated beings over uncounted age” (369). Priestley reacted strongly to that suggestion, which effectively “affirm[ed] an effect without a cause” (Brooke, “Science and Dissent,” 33). Priestley made reference to other experiments in which the absence of atmosphere prevented the growth of green matter (Brooke,

369), such that “there was no evidence . . . for a change in the nature of plants and animals,

45 Ann Thomson, Bodies of Thought: Science, Religion, and the Soul in the Early Enlightenment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 224. 46 A. Wolf, History of Science, Technology, and Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century (London: George Allen, 1938), 786. 77

which had remained as described in Homer and the Book of Job” (369).

My claim here is that Darwin’s poems with philosophical notes were likely involved with

the writing traditions of Dissent and Deism. His work would have been susceptible of negative interpretations whether or not he gave some indication of where his loyalties were because of his

Deism. The community of Dissent helped to shape his views on science and female education and gave them definition. To promote science and female education, he not only had to acknowledge what he was, he had to show that that was nonthreatening to the status quo – at

least generally. Science and female education would cause some changes. The task that devolved

on him was to show that those changes were non-radical and positive. In the next chapter, I

consider modern criticism of Darwin’s poetry and its interest in Darwin’s beliefs and genre,

showing where these begin to intersect: in Lucretian didactic epic.

I have dared to take positions on current problems, reread old and modern classics, or explored the transversal bonds which link the world of nature to that of culture; I have often set foot on the bridges which unite (or should unite) the scientific and literary cultures, stepping over a crevasse which has always seemed to me absurd. There are people who wring their hands and call it an abyss, but do nothing to fill it; there are also those who work to widen it, as if the scientific and literary man belong to two different human subspecies, reciprocally incomprehensible, fated to ignore each other and not apt to engage in cross-fertilization. This is an unnatural schism, unnecessary, harmful, the result of distant taboos . . . 47

Chapter 3

Questions Concerning Darwin’s Faith, Poetic Purpose, and Chosen Genre

In this chapter, my argument involves, to some extent, rearticulating and elaborating on

my view of Darwin’s beliefs and milieu. Its emphasis, however, is on the longstanding

presumption that he had atheistic and Revolutionary poetic intent and this damaged his ability to

conform to any established genre. As I have discussed, Darwin’s titles for his poems includes the

descriptor “Poem. With Philosophical Notes.” Coleridge connected Darwin with Radical

Dissent, and made an implicit distinction between his didactic poetry and religious poetry.

Darwin was a member of Joseph Johnson’s circle of Dissenter writers. Johnson was interested in

publishing scientific works as well as theological writings by members of the community of

Dissent – which to some extent overlapped with and contained that of Deism. In some cases,

Johnson published multiple kinds of text by one author. Darwin was one of those authors.

Johnson published Darwin’s non-literary and literary works. Priestley – who was also a member of the Lunar Society with Darwin – put forth both theological and scientific texts, which is a testament to how closely related these apparently vastly different fields could be in the mind of a

47 Primo Levi, “Other People’s Trades,” in Other People’s Trades, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (New York: Summit, 1989), 10.

Dissenter. I believe, then, that it is reasonable to look for theological underpinnings in Darwin’s poetry.

My interest in this chapter is to connect Darwin’s Deistic Dissent with a specific literary

genre that was potentially serviceable to his didactic interests and intentions. In the first section, I

consider parodies of, or pertaining to, Darwin’s poetry, showing where and how his kind of

poetry was discussed, and how the implications of its science for public morality and

government were construed. In the second section, I discuss modern Darwin criticism. I show

where Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura (in English, On the Nature of Things) comes into view as an

important source for Darwin, most often on the level of his beliefs as a materialist philosopher. I

claim that Lucretius’ poem provided Darwin with a model genre: didactic epic.

Parodies

“The Loves of the Triangles” was published in instalments in the Anti-jacobin. The journal

was founded by George Canning, Jr., and edited by William Gifford; George Ellis and John

Hookham Frere also served as editors. The four men were the primary contributors. Three out of

the four of them were Members of Parliament in Pitt’s ministry; Gifford was the exception. By

mandate, the Anti-jacobin was to be printed every Sunday and sold every Monday until the

parliamentary session was finished48; it ran from 20 November 1797 through 9 July 1798. The

journal was Tory in orientation, and it had Pitt’s sanction. As its name indicates, it opposed

Jacobinism – i.e., French-influenced, Whig/ Low Church politics. The journal aimed at preventing the spread of Jacobinism in every form leading up to the election. Canning and the others planned not to attach their names to it as editors and contributors because it was overtly

48 Wendy Hinde, “The Anti-Jacobin, 1797-1799,” in George Canning (London: Collins, 1973), 64. 80

political. Canning, in particular, worried that it did not befit him as an “aspiring politician”

(Hinde, 64). All of their identities were soon revealed in a letter to the editor (54).

The journal offered itself to the public “at a moment when [,] whatever [were] the habits of inquiry and the anxiety for information upon subjects of public concern diffused among all ranks of people, the vehicles of intelligence [were] already multiplied, in a proportion nearly equal to this encreased demand, and to the encreased importance and variety of matter.”49 The journal’s stated purpose was to apprise men of “THE TRUTH” (Prospectus of the Anti-Jacobin, 2), in

such a way as would make other “information” (2) appear as “the constant violation, the

disguise, the perversion of the truth” (2). Poetry was a particularly rich resource for transmitting

the editors’ version of the truth, not least because it was entertaining. As they explained: “In our

anxiety to provide for the amusement as well as information of our Readers, we have not omitted

to make all the enquiries in our power for ascertaining the means of procuring poetical

assistance.”50 Their anxiety over where readers would seek amusement as well as information

was quite real. Poetry had the power to influence popular opinion without necessarily seeming to

do so. At the same time that poetry was, potentially, a vehicle for contrarian views, it had a broad

audience. Parody gave the editors access to that audience, and recourse; they were able to

harness the power of poetry, in the process of undermining it.

49 “Prospectus,” in The Anti-Jacobin; or, weekly examiner. In two volumes. . . . London : published by J. Wright, . . . , [1797-1798], 4th ed., revised and corrected, Vol. 1, ed. William Gifford (London, 1799), 1. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale Document Number: CW104866671. ESTC Number: T135264. 50 “Poetry. Introduction to the Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin.” In The Anti-Jacobin; or, weekly examiner, No. 1, Monday, November 20th, 1797. Reprinted in The Anti-Jacobin; or, weekly examiner. In two volumes. . . . London : published by J. Wright, . . . , [1797-1798], 4th ed., revised and corrected, Vol. 1, ed. William Gifford (London, 1799), 31. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale Document Number: CW104866671. ESTC Number: T135264 81

Their basic distrust of poetry was reflected in their apology for not having “been able to

find one good and true poet, of sound principles and sober practice, upon whom we could rely

for [assisting] us” (“Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin,” 32). In other words, they were unable to find a poet of whose principles and practice they approved. They claimed, “It would give us no small satisfaction to be able to report, that we had succeeded in this point, precisely in the manner which would best have suited our own taste and feelings, as well as those which we wish to cultivate in our readers” (31). The editors had no particular objection to poetry as a source of entertainment and information. They objected when the information was not to their liking. Their inability to find a poem that pleased them only strengthened their determination to limit the influence of poetry on readers: “In this difficulty, we have had no choice but either to provide no

poetry at all, – a shabby expedient, – or to go to the only market where it is to be had good and

ready made, that of the Jacobins – an expedient full of danger, and not to be used but with the

utmost caution and delicacy” (32). The editors opted to “select from time to time from among

those effusions of the Jacobin Muse which happen to fall in our way, such pieces as may serve to

illustrate some one of the principles on which the poetical, as well as the political doctrine of the

NEW SCHOOL is established” (32-33). Those pieces were parodies. While some of them were

unsolicited contributions, many more were collaborative, and any of the editors was “free to

make changes or additions” (Hinde, 62) as he saw fit. “The Loves of the Triangles” was an

internal contribution and it is commonly believed to have been worked on by all four men.51 As

Logan puts it, we should not “give Messrs. Canning, Frere, and Ellis too high credit for their

51 For example, refer to Charles Edmonds, “Contents, With the Names of the Authors,” in Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin . . . (London: G. Willis, 1854). Google Books. http://books.google.ca/books?id=PPlDAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=anti- jacobin+prospectus&source=bl&ots=0colizjMl5&sig=G-JH7-psmV7rWsnpoKef5fK- Bz4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oX8lT_6FLKHa0QHeqtzpCA&ved=0CCsQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=a nti-jacobin%20prospectus&f=false 82 noble purgation of the public taste; Darwin was known as a ‘radical’ in politics and religion, and this was the crime that spurred these gentlemen to battle.”52 The editors were concerned about the religious and political leanings of The Loves of the Plants (on which they modelled their parody) and by extension Darwin’s whole Botanic Garden (to which they referred in the parody).

The putative author of “The Loves of the Triangles, one Mr Higgins, is probably patterned after William Godwin, Joseph Trapp, Pope, and (of course) Darwin. In the section marked

“Poetry” – by way of introduction to the parody – the editors identify Mr. Higgins as the author who was responsible for an earlier submission to the journal, a piece entitled “The Progress of

Man” (a play on Pope’s Essay On Man). The editors explain to their readers that they found it necessary “to remonstrate with Mr. H. on the freedom of some of the positions laid down in his other Didactic Poem [i.e., The Progress of Man].”53 They quote from his response to their remonstrations, which he reportedly submitted along with the manuscript of his newest didactic poem, “The Loves of the Triangles.” Mr. Higgins’ letter to the editors comprises his defence of

“the object which I have in view in my larger work [meaning, again, The Progress of Man]”: “to restore this first and pure simplicity; to rescue and recover the interesting nakedness of human nature, by ridding her of the cumbrous establishments which the folly, and pride, and self- interest of the worst part of our species have heaped upon her. . . . Such is my object. I do not disavow it. Nor is it mine alone” (“Poetry,” Anti-Jacobin, No. 23, 179-80). While Higgins identifies a host of other texts that have been written for the same purpose –“Encyclopaedias,

Treatises, Novels, Magazines, Reviews, and New Annual Registers” (180) – he claims that “it

52 James Venable Logan, The Poetry and Aesthetics of Erasmus Darwin (New York: Octagon, 1972), 19. 53 “Poetry,” in The Anti-Jacobin; or, Weekly Examiner, No. 23, Monday, April 16th, 1798 (New York: AMS Press, [1968]), 179. 83

remained to bring the heavy artillery of a Didactic Poem to bear upon the same subject” (180).

He also refers to “the several other concomitant and subsidiary Didactic Poems which are necessary to complete [his] plan” (179), and “the several auxiliary DIDACTIC POEMS which I have now in hand (one of which, THE LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES, I herewith transmit to you)” (180). Higgins’ description of his poems – the parodies “The Progress of Man” and “The

Loves of the Triangles” – as didactic poems indirectly implies that the original poems – The

Essay on Man and The Loves of the Plants – are didactic poems. Pope, Darwin, and Higgins are implicitly linked together as didactic poets through the description. Higgins, however, distinguishes himself from Pope explicitly: “Our first principle is, then – the reverse of the trite and dull maxim of Pope – ‘Whatever is, is right.’ We contend, that ‘Whatever is, is wrong’ (180).

If the putative author of “The Loves of the Triangles” supposes that “Whatever is, is wrong,” then this is the charge against the author of The Loves of the Plants. Through Higgins’ re- articulation of Pope’s maxim, the editors are simultaneously trading on some of Pope’s former authority and representing didactic poems as art defying nature. Higgins appears as a pompous nobody. Next, Higgins paraphrases Trapp: “I am persuaded that there is no Science, however

abstruse, nay, no Trade or Manufacture, which may not be taught by a didactic poem” (180).

Describing “The Loves of the Triangles” as “an attempt . . . to enlist the Imagination under the banners of Geometry” (180), he remarks, “Botany I found done to my hands” (180). Darwin – in his Advertisement – enlisted the Imagination under the banner of Science. Similarly, Higgins has opted to enlist the Imagination under the banners of Geometry. The re-articulation of Darwin’s

theme without significant change suggests that his didactic poetry is good for only a very limited

range of subjects.

Following the letter, the editors provide pseudo-criticism of “The Loves of the Triangles”

as Higgins’ poem. While it possesses “beauties of the most striking kind,” these are “rather

amusing than intelligible” (“Poetry,” Anti-Jacobin, No. 23, 180). To put it another way, they are

not beauties at all, because they are glaringly incongruent with nature. For that reason, the editors

deem the poem as unlikely to “assist . . . any young Student, at either University, in his

Mathematical Studies” 180) and are happy to say that they “apprehend little danger to [their] readers’ morals” (180) besides. In mock-praise, the editors credit “The Loves of the Triangles” with possessing at least “the more rigid and unbending stiffness of a mathematical subject” (i.e., a masculine subject), rather than this more soft and supine subject: “the sexual (or, as I have heard several worthy Gentlewomen of my acquaintance . . . term it . . . the sensual) system of

Linnaeus” (180). This reveals the source of their concern over Darwin’s poetry: that its science promoted sensualism rather than virtue, and was, after all, a threat to morality.

The parody itself54 is “inscribed to Dr. Darwin,” (“The Loves of the Triangles,” 181) and it

is strongly derivative of Darwin’s basic form: the notes help to “prove” the verses. The aim,

however, is to represent “the Didactic Muse” (1.35) as “Divine NONSENSIA” (1.36), and thereby diminish Darwin’s influence over readers (poetically and politically). Polygamy and female libertinism feature prominently: in “The sly RECTANGLE’S too licentious love!” (1.76)

“three bright nymphs” (1.77) “burn” (1.77) for “the wily wizard” (1.77) and “requite his flame by turns” (1.78), and as for “the fair PARABOLA” (1.107), whose “timid arms with virgin blush unfold!” (1.108) her “eyes betray/ A heart that glows with love’s resistless sway” (1.109-10). As

54 George Canning, Jr., et al. “The Loves of the Triangles,” a poem in one canto, in The Anti- Jacobin; or, weekly examiner, instalment 1 in no. 23, Monday, April 16th, 1798; instalment 2 in no. 24, Monday, April 23rd, 1798; instalment no. 3 in no. 26, Monday, May 7th, 1798 (New York: AMS Press, [1968]), pp. 180-82, 186-87, and 191-92, respectively. Parenthetical citations provide abbreviated canto and line numbers for the verses and page numbers for the footnotes. 85

in The Loves of the Plants, the verse creates interest in the notes, and the notes exceed the function of explaining the lines above.

Darwin’s form provides the editors with the opportunity to vaunt their knowledge of a wide array of subjects, including poetry and Euclidean algebra among others (and the ability to pervert that knowledge). They define every term (e.g., “Postulate,” “Axiom,” “Tangents”). They

also supply reasons for the geometric forms that they used. “Cissois” is “a Curve supposed to

resemble the sprig of ivy from which it has its name” and “therefore [is] peculiarly adapted to poetry” (“The Loves of the Triangles,” 181). The “Conchois, or Conchylis,” is “a most beautiful

and picturesque Curve,” which “bears a fanciful resemblance to a Conch shell,” and is “capable

of infinite extension” (181). The Conchois also, reportedly, “presents a striking analogy between

the Animal and Mathematical Creation,” as “every individual of this species contain[s] within

itself a series of young Conchoids for several generations, in the same manner as the Aphides,

and other insect tribes, are supposed to do” (181). The analogy – between ontological recapitulation in animals and in a mathematical curve – is deliberately tenuous. It brings together two notions that have no bearing on how the human tribe operates. By implication, the sexual metaphor of plants to which Darwin subscribes is also insignificant. The parody makes connections between The Loves of the Plants, eighteenth-century didactic poetry (especially

Pope’s Essay on Man), and moral decay.

The Golden Age is an epistolary poem in rhymed heroic couplets with footnotes. Its speaker purports to be Dr. Darwin, addressing Dr. Beddoes in a “lay.”55 The poem was also

55 Anonymous, The Golden Age, A Poetical Epistle from Erasmus D-n, M. D. to Thomas Beddoes, M. D. (London : printed for F. and C. Rivington; and J. Cooke, Oxford, 1794), line 7. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale Document # CW1168 71934. ESTC # N007154. Parenthetical citations for verse material reflect line numbers; for footnotes, page numbers. 86

published under the name of “Erasmus D — N, M. D.” (Golden Age, title page) falsely.56 The author’s ultimate target was Beddoes. His association with Darwin – a physician-turned-literary- celebrity – supplied an effective angle of attack. In The Golden Age, “Darwin’s” verse expostulations are supposed to reveal the hidden terrible meanings of footnoted quotations from

Beddoes’ scientific works. The speaker begins by addressing Beddoes as the

Boast of proud Shropshire, Oxford’s lasting shame,

Whom none but Coxcombs scorn, but Fools defame,

Eternal war with dullness born to wage,

Thou Paracelsus of this wondrous age;

BEDDOES, the philosophic Chymist’s Guide,

The Bigot’s Scourge, of Democrats the Pride.

(Golden Age, 1-6)

He proceeds to affiliate himself with Beddoes in three ways: as “Brother” (7), “Friend” (7), and

“Sans Culotte” (8). The closing descriptor, “sans culotte,” refers to radicals of the lower classes

during the French Revolution, or literally, those “without silk breeches.”57 It forms the basis for

the parody of Darwin’s style of verse, Beddoes’ style of prose, and their politics. Darwin’s verse

56 See Michelle Faubert, “Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Beddoes, and ‘The Golden Age,’” European Romantic Review 22.4 (August 2011): 453-76. Faubert shows that “The Golden Age” has “often been attributed to Erasmus Darwin” (453) since 1794, including in “WorldCat and Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)” (472). 57 ibid. Faubert takes the stricter view that the anonymous author refers to Darwin as a “Sans Culotte” and Beddoes as being “of Democrats the Pride” (453; citing lines 8 and 6 of the poem, respectively). Although that is correct in a literal sense, it seems to me that in the context of lines in which the speaker is attesting to supposed commonalities between the two men, “Sans Culotte” and “Democrats” could also be used interchangeably. This fits with Faubert’s argument that the author is creating “a connection between empirical science and radical politics by suggesting that nature itself will be perverted, and even unnaturally politicized, by Darwin and Beddoes” (454), and seeks therefore “to destroy Darwin’s and Beddoes’ literary, political, and scientific reputations through a parody of Darwin’s famous poetry, especially The Botanic Garden (1791)” (457). 87

is (apparently) the worst of its kind, Beddoes’ prose is grounded in it, and the two are apparently

nothing more than poorly clothed radical propaganda. The speaker requests, “Accept this lay;

and to thy Brother, Friend,/ Or name more dear, a Sans Culotte attend,/ While in Rhyme’s

Galligaskins [trousers] I enclose,/ The broad posteriors of thy brawny prose./ (7-10). Seemingly,

“the broad posteriors of [Beddoes’] brawny prose” can be “enclose[d]” only by the voluminous

rhymes, or pantalons, of Darwin. That Darwin himself is represented as a sans culotte generates

suspicion over his ability to provide even the appearance of decency (i.e., through concealment

of its opposite). In what follows, Darwin appears as “a silly swain” (13), who lacks “the force

and fire/ Of some, whom Frenchmen’s bloody deeds inspire” (13-14). He wishes, but finds

himself unable, to “rise above mortal ken” (17), “prank with my pearly phrase each pretty line”

(20), “burst . . . o’er the bounds of vulgar Rhyme” (25), and

hail the progress of those blissful days

When fair Philosophy’s meridian rays

Shall brighten Nature’s face, shall drive the Moles

Of blinking Error to their secret holes,

Disperse the darkness of primaeval Night,

And bid a new Creation rise to light!

(29-34)

Instead, the pretty lines will reveal the perceived implications of various statements in Beddoes’ works of non-fiction.

As the first footnote to the parody claims,

The renovation of the world under the benign influence of French Freedom has long been

foretold by prophets of every description, by some who manufacture verses, others who

manufacture cotton, by maudling Mrs’s, and mincing Misses, by enlightened Lawyers

and more enlightened Physicians; but by none more fully expected, more ardently longed

for, than by Dr. Beddoes and his “Dear Giddy!” (Golden Age, 5-6)

The parody meant to render French Freedom suspect: the underlying fear was that a renovation rather than mere revelation of the world would be the result. The speaker uses Beddoes’ words against him:

The great Dr. assures us, that not only science in general will shortly advance towards

perfection, but that in particular “a new Medicine will arise from the ashes of the old with

healing in its wings.” How this revolution is to be effected we are informed in the

dedication of his Observations on Calculus, &c. p. 4. “We are just beginning to catch a

glimpse of the laws of animal Nature; and now when the human mind seems in so many

countries about to be roused from that torpor, by which it has so long been benumbed, we

may reasonably indulge the expectation of a rapid progress in this the most beneficial of

all the sciences . . . (6)

The note explicitly connects Beddoes’ vision of the advancement of science in general, and a new Medicine specifically, with a revolution. Further quotation gives that revolution some shade and contour:

An infinitely small portion of genius has hitherto been exerted to diminish the sum of our

painful sensations; and the force of society has been exclusively at the disposal of

Despots and Juntas, the great Artificers of human Evil. Should an entire change in these

two respects any where take place, every member of Society might soon expect to

experience in his own person the consequence of so happy an innovation; and should the

example be generally followed, there is no improvement in the condition of the World, for

which we might not hope from the bloodless rivalship of Nations. (6)

If medicine continued to advance and a shift in the balance of power took place, the improved

health of all citizens could become central to the bloodless rivalship of Nations; what they

competed with one another to provide. The speaker of the parody seeks to trivialise the impact of intellectual genius and political liberty:

But we are told, that the same influence of Liberty and Genius will not only in other

respects effect equal wonders, but produce greater blessings: “We know,” exclaims this

egregious Chymist, “that vegetables are capable of forming oils either exactly the same as

those of Animals, or very nearly resembling them. Thus we have the suet of the Croton

Sebiserum, the butter of the Phoenix Dactylifera and of the Butyrum Cacao. When, from

a more intimate acquaintance with them, we shall be better able to apply the Laws of

organic bodies to the accommodation as well as preservation of Life, may we not, by

regulating the vegetable functions, teach our woods and hedges to supply us with Butter

and Tallow? Observations on Calculus, &c. p. 109. (6)

The passage in which Beddoes refers to “a more intimate acquaintance with [vegetables]” brings readers in mind of The Loves of the Plants. Ostensibly, the generation of butter and tallow from

woods and hedges is a small thing relative to a revolution. But this projected conversion of vegetable oils into substitutes for those of animals involved a change to the natural condition of

things. In the relevant verse, the speaker forecasts “great days!” (Golden Age, 41) when “British wool” (41) will be “no more immers’d in many a foreign dye” (41) because it will come from plants; when “no more the lazy Ox shall gormandize” (45) because “Thickets” (48) will supply

“Beef” (48); when “the patient Dairy-Maid no more shall learn/ With tedious toil to whirl the

frothy Churn” (49-50) because “Hedges” (51) will supply “Butter” (52); and when “Cits” (61) no

more shall play “Gentlemen” (62) because “reverend Thames” (59) will supply “deluges of

Cream!” (64). In short, an innovative system of horticulture could potentially yield greater

harvests at a lesser expense of industry than traditional cattle-based agriculture. As a result, the

material underpinnings of social hierarchy could come undone. As if the images of procuring

beef, butter, and cream direct from thickets, hedges, and the riverbed are not laughable enough

(even today), the speaker describes a “dull Clown” (67) who “with stupid stare” (67) “survey[s]”

(67) a tree:

Where Leaves once grew, now periwigs of Hair!

While fluids, which a wondrous change betray,

Ooze from the vernal bud, the summer spray,

Differing from animals alone in name,

(As Botanists already half exclaim).

(68-72)

Representing a tree that has transformed into a person as living proof that – as “Botanists already half exclaim” – there is no essential difference between forms of life subjects the exhibitions of

“The Loves of the Plants” to ridicule. Darwin’s analogy of plants as people is incomplete, in that it devolves on plant rather than human sexual parts. But it requires very little imagination to take the analogy to its logical extreme. The parody echoes erotic satires of botany in the next several lines: plants “susceptible of joy and woe” (73), of “feel[ing] all we feel, and know[ing] whate’er we know!” (74), will pose a threat to “ye fair” (79), who might “with tempting step all heedless brush/ Too near some wanton metamorphos’d Bush” (81-82), “Or only hear perchance the western breeze/ Steal murmuring through the animated Trees” (83-84), and “too late with shame

and grief . . . feel/ What [their] fictitious Pads would ill conceal! (87-88): an unwanted pregnancy. Darwin’s aspirations for his poem are effectively quashed: the only possible consequence is to provide women with needless fears for their maidenhead.

Having so treated Linnaean botany and Darwin’s poem, the parody turns to Beddoes’ special interest in extending the period of youth. The footnotes include Beddoes’ discussion (in

Observations) of the possibility of youth’s “indefinite” “protract[ion]” (Golden Age, 9) and reference (in a letter to Darwin) to this “dream of Alchemy” (9). The parodist uses this material to imply that the protraction of youth is indefinite in the sense of doubtful and that the dream of alchemy is mere fancy. The parody continues to trade on Darwin’s supposed inability to achieve a real metamorphosis through verse metamorphoses. In the verse, the speaker intones,

POOR POPE, who griev’d “that Life could scarce supply

“More than to look about him, and to die,”

Had he but flourish’d in these Halcyon days,

Might long have bid Life’s little candle blaze,

Have grown strait, handsome, brisk and debonair,

The Muses’ favourite, favourite of the Fair!

Happy is the Poet’s lot, who can prolong

Till time shall be no more, his deathless song;

And live himself to see his swelling name

Roll, like a Snowball, gathering all its Fame!

(101-10)

Pope – whose physical disability and romantic difficulties provide one example of a poet’s lot – figures in the representation of Darwin as overestimating the promise of the times and his own

role. The lot of the contemporary poet is cast in the worst light possible, as that of a cannibal.

Should he require a cure for what ails him, he can

Take from some regenerate Oak a savoury steak,

Sliced off the slaughter’d Monster’s quondam stump,

Converted now into a Real Rump,

And, blest with an accommodating maw,

Devour the luscious bit, red, recent, raw!

(120-24)

Following this denigration, the speaker calls on the “Muse” (125). He supports the cessation of

“ranks and distinctions” (129), so that “all reeking lie/ In the mean muck of low Equality!” (129-

30). He credits “Ye pious Atheists, Moralists, who deem/ The Christian’s Heaven and Hell an

idle dream” (137-38), and who “dare defy/ The King of Kings, that bugbear of the Sky” (143-

44). Finally, he proclaims that “Virtue consists in the nudity of breech!” (152), a play on the

literal translation of “sans culotte.” The proclamation reveals the perceived philosophy of the set:

virtue is meaningless in the absence of any law that might be breached (i.e., any absolute moral

law). While the parody avoids making any sincere statements about virtue, i.e., avoids any direct

didacticism, its implicit message is that whatever “prophets” such as Darwin and Beddoes

forecast is contrary to nature. As Faubert suggests, “‘The Golden Age’ combines the high (in

form, specifically the use of heroic couplets) with the low (in subject matter, that is, through

bawdy references to sex and barnyard hijinks)” (“Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Beddoes, and ‘The

Golden Age’ of the 1790s,” 454). That is “an ideal marriage of form and content” (454) for the

anonymous parodist, in the sense that “such mixing is [his] main complaint about Darwin and

Beddoes’ democratic politics” (454), i.e., that they “attempt to marry the high classes with the

low” (454). Focussing “Augustan” (463) couplets on low subjects, the parody achieved “the odd

distinction of having been read ‘straight’” (454), as if Darwin wrote it himself. Both “The Loves

of the Triangles” and The Golden Age suggest an easy rejection of Darwin’s apparently radical

propaganda through reference to and mimicry of the Augustan – more specifically, Popean – elements of his poem. At the same time, however, they inadvertently credit the capacity of his

poem to carry and convey a political message more powerfully than such rejection implies.

Darwin’s Genre

Although “The Loves of the Triangles” links Darwin with eighteenth-century didactic

poetry – a broad category of genres – modern critics have tended to consign his poetry to

irreligion and either heroic epic (because of its sincere aim of promoting Enlightenment science)

or mock-epic (because of its rhymed heroic couplets) and find that it is unsuccessful either way.

If we require a heroic narrative in blank verse, we find a science lesson in rhymed heroic

couplets. If we demand a lampoon of such teachings, we find a sincere belief in their importance.

Darwin’s poetry appears to us as, at best, textually confused. At worst, it seems trans-genred:

epic here, mock-epic there, and a mash-up in the end.

Desmond King-Hele: Darwin’s Didactic Echoes

Desmond King-Hele does not appear to regard Darwin’s didactic (and scientific) aim as

problematic for a conventional epic. He remarks, however, that something is amiss with the

didacticism of The Loves of the Plants: namely, it seems to have some “mock-heroics,”58 to

“half-echo The Rape of the Lock” (King-Hele, Erasmus Darwin: A Life, 233). In other words,

The Loves of the Plants is not a straightforward heroic epic; it is parodying something. His

suggestion that it “half-echoes” Pope’s mock-epic is a reasonably good description, partly

58 Desmond King-Hele, Erasmus Darwin: A Life of Unequalled Achievement (London: DLM, 1999), 233. 94

because of Darwin’s mock-heroic couplets, which are out-of-place in an English epic, and partly because it is clear that Darwin is not parodying botany; something else is being sent up in the pages of the poem. What King-Hele’s suggestion leads one to wonder is whether Darwin’s poem

is neither epic nor mock-epic but rather a generic mixture in which his mock-heroic couplets

might serve some purpose other than the expected one, i.e., undermining the ostensible

seriousness of the poem’s subject (botany). Critics have not taken much notice of Darwin’s

description for his poetry: poem with philosophical notes. That tag implies English didactic

poetry, which includes poetry in several genres. Some are serious and others are satiric. Mock-

epic was but one of the latter sort.

King-Hele is primarily concerned with accounting for Darwin’s contributions to the science of his time, and, where possible, to modern science (particularly Darwin’s proto- evolutionary ideas about the gradual development of the earth to its present form). He has also written extensively on Darwin’s poetry and its influence on the Romantics. The following excerpt is representative of his view of Darwin’s primary contribution to English poetry:

Darwin’s main contributions to science were in biology, but . . . he was not afraid of

speculation in other subjects. Darwin expounded his theories in the prose treatise

Zoonomia and in the didactic poems The Botanic Garden and The Temple of Nature,

published between 1789 and 1803. Darwin’s poems served almost as a guide to existing

knowledge, and he argued the merits of controversial theories in his many lengthy Notes.

He could fit cold facts and scientific jargon into the straitjacket of the standard couplet so

skilfully that the verse-form was sugar to the pill, not a hindrance to the sense.59

59 Desmond King-Hele, Shelley: His Thought and Work, 3rd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1984), 162-63. 95

In other words, Darwin made science palatable through verse. He gave verse an instructive role with respect to science. Indeed, Darwin’s poetry is a sort of guide to Enlightenment thought. It is filled with cold facts (in many cases, in the sense that they have since been disproved). However, the idea that Darwin’s poetry added scientific stuffing to the couplet does very little to suggest its literary value, or, therefore, a compelling reason for reading it as literature. However attractive is the idea that poetry had a large audience and the ability to teach science in a more exciting way than science itself could teach, we expect more from poetry than meter and rhyme. We expect poetry to do more with whatever material it takes on than simply to disseminate it.

King-Hele is, of course, being somewhat strategic. Whereas he recognises and appreciates the speculative nature of Darwin’s poetry, many others consider this its essential weakness.

Consider the following argument against poetic liberty by evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay

Gould:

Metaphors can help the human mind make creative leaps over intellectual obstacles, but

they can mislead if they are silly, obtuse, or inaccurate. Charles Darwin and his

grandfather Erasmus used metaphors for different purposes and with different degrees of

success. Erasmus Darwin, a prominent liberal thinker of the British Enlightenment, wrote

a long poem in which he compared the reproduction of various plant species to classical

myths or current events. His metaphors were often forced, perhaps because one of his

stated purposes was to idealize nature rather than describe it with factual clarity. Charles

Darwin, whose prose was clear but rather dry, employed metaphors effectively to support

his concept of evolution, which he knew could not be sold by facts alone.60

60 Stephen Jay Gould, “Four Metaphors in Three Generations: Examining the Writing Techniques of Erasmus and Charles Darwin,” Natural History 102 (December 1993): 12. 96

Gould does not take Darwin to task for his use of the Linnaean sexual metaphor: though it has

long since been debunked, it was thought tenable at the time. Rather, he opposes Darwin’s

comparisons between plant reproduction and myths or historical events. In other words, he sees

Darwin as having had the audacity to use literary metaphors, to do something more with the

science of his day than simply disseminate it. In contrast, the younger Darwin opted for metaphors that connected physical objects on the basis of a strong similarity of form (i.e., homologies), and showed that his theory of evolution was plausible. King-Hele and Gould represent two sides of the same coin: for both, what matters is whether or not verse can do science. For King-Hele, the answer is “yes”; for Gould, it is “no”. We have the sense that if

King-Hele is right, then Darwin’s scientific poetry is insufficiently literary, and that if Gould is right, then it is insufficiently scientific. Either way, it has failed to accomplish its goals.

Barbel Czennia: Darwin’s Poetic (Re)Turn

Barbel Czennia tackles the apparent oxymoron of “scientific poetry” head-on. As he argues, we witness in Darwin’s poems “science tak[ing] a poetic turn.”61 In contrast, in the

poetry of Thomson and (later on) the Romantics, we see “poetry taking a decidedly scientific

turn” (Czennia, 37). As Czennia sees it, any such turning indicates that there is a fundamental

connection between poetry and science. Darwin was not trying to assimilate the two – instead, he

was aiming at a partial “synthesis of ancient and modern scientific thought, and of science and

poetry” (39). Poetry is not science, properly speaking. But science can be seen as an elaboration

on poetry. In that way, poetry always occupies an important position in the history of human

thought: it is the foundation on which knowledge is built.

61 Barbel Czennia, “From Aeolus to Aerology, Or, Boreas Meets the Barometer: Clouds, Winds, and Weather Observation in Eighteenth-century Poetry,” in Imagining the Sciences: Expressions of New Knowledge in the “Long” Eighteenth Century, eds. Robert C. Leitz III and Kevin L. Cope (New York: AMS, 2004), 38. 97

While Darwin’s use of mythological machinery might seem as nothing more than “a conventional rhetorical gesture, like respect being paid to neoclassicist poetical genre- expectations” (Czennia, 38), it helps him as a “scientist to demonstrate that the sphere of factual, empirically gained knowledge and the sphere of the imagination have never been separate in the first place” (39). Again, science and poetry are not worlds apart from each other. Poetry is, in a way, “a genuine scientific research tool” (51); it provides science with a place to start. Czennia’s analysis is the only one of its kind, and it lays some of the necessary groundwork for thinking about Darwin’s poetry in the right way. It does not, however, identify any formal basis for further exploration.

Martin Priestman: Darwin’s Quasi-Atheistic Poetry

Literary critic Martin Priestman explores “links between the development of explicit atheism in the period 1780-1830 and the simultaneous emergence of much important new poetry,”62 including Darwin’s poems. Priestman’s work shows us how specific authors in specific poems expressed atheistic or quasi-atheistic beliefs, such that a body of atheistic poetry emerged, a body of poetry that gave voice to unbelief. He does not consider how existing poetic forms might have been affected, and how new poetic forms may have been necessitated.

Priestman turns first to what he regards as the original atheistic poem. This was “the

Roman poet Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, written in the first century BC in six books aiming to instil the principles of Epicurean materialist philosophy” (Priestman, Romantic Atheism, 44) or atomism. Priestman writes,

62 Martin Priestman, Romantic Atheism: Poetry and Freethought, 1780-1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 1.

In Britain, a new wave of Lucretian editions and translations appeared between 1796 and

1813. In 1796-7 the radical Unitarian Gilbert Wakefield produced the first new annotated

edition of the Latin text since Creech; to be followed by three early nineteenth-century

translations in quick succession. In 1805, another Unitarian, John Mason Good, produced

the first complete translation since Creech’s, accompanying it with voluminous notes

citing clear Lucretian borrowings by English writers (47).

The notes include references to Lucretian borrowings by Darwin (47). Despite that, and the

possible Unitarian/ Dissenting interest in De Rerum Natura in the 1790s, Priestman refers to

Darwin’s “three major poems – The Loves of the Plants, The Economy of Vegetation, and The

Temple of Nature” (62) – as three “poems which are best considered entirely separately” (64),

despite their most obvious similarities (all poems-with-philosophical notes, all treating of the origins and progress of life forms).

De Rerum Natura was read widely (in the original and in translation). Where a thing is read widely, to borrow is common. Dryden, Swift, and Pope all borrow from Lucretius.

Borrowings differ in nature – not only from poet to poet, but also from poem to poem. As

obvious as this will seem, different poets have different ideas, and different poems serve

different purposes. Priestman limits Darwin’s borrowings to content (the kinds of things that he

writes, not how he organises it). He regards Darwin’s Lucretian content as reflective of his

“nominally deistic materialism” (Romantic Atheism, 48), i.e., his closeted atheism. Darwin’s poems are, apparently, more significant the more explicitly he echoes Lucretius’ philosophy, the more he seems to be admitting in print that he is an atheist. Priestman considers Darwin as most

Lucretian and controversial – as a “freethinker” (87) or “Master of the Universe” (44) – in The

Temple of Nature. It is, supposedly, “overwhelmingly Lucretian” (66), the least guarded of the

99 three poems, the most plainly atheistic. In contrast, Priestman considers The Economy of

Vegetation as containing little more than a “strong echo of Lucretius’ assertion that the world will eventually disintegrate” (65), although he notes that it has “far more radical material” (64) than The Loves of the Plants. He regards The Loves of the Plants as little more than “an extended botany lesson” (63), but suggests that, “as with Lucretius” (64), the message is that “the only

‘laws’ which ultimately rule us are those of Nature, represented by Venus” (64). The impression is of a poet who redrafts the same poem two times over, until it says what it meant all along. That impression may well be valid to some degree. It is not clear, however, that Darwin’s only goal in writing the three poems was to re-articulate his standpoint until it was as unmistakable as he could make it (or wanted to make it).

Like most critics, Priestman thinks about Darwin’s poems in terms of epic. Importantly, however, he seeks to credit their heavily didactic nature in some way, rather than accepting that this is their flaw. He remarks, “Didactic poems on huge, global subjects as Pope’s Essay on Man,

Thomson’s Seasons and Akenside’s Pleasures of the Imagination owed much to the ‘Life, the

Universe, and Everything’ content of De Rerum Natura” (Priestman, Romantic Atheism, 47). It seems that the only strong connection to be made between De Rerum Natura and another poem is on the basis of content. However, he notes a few structural resemblances between De Rerum

Natura and The Temple of Nature, having to do with their titles, section titles, and invocations

(66). He also notes that “antecedents for the whole structure of Queen Mab can be found in

Darwin’s Economy of Vegetation and Temple of Nature” (222), perhaps suggesting that Darwin’s influence was not solely that of an atheist on other atheists such as Percy Shelley, but also that of a poet with a structure to offer, an “atheist” genre. Yet Priestman never identifies or hints at a

“didactic” genre to which De Rerum Natura, The Temple of Nature, and (potentially) Queen Mab

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might belong. Instead, he refers dismissively to “the bustling, often hectic, structures of Darwin’s

three poems” (74), and to “the lightly inconsequential structure” (63) of The Loves of the Plants.

Elsewhere, Priestman describes how “Darwin came to be increasingly distrusted as a

political radical, atheist and sensualist.”63 According to Priestman, the result was Darwin’s

“cover[s] for his materialism” (Priestman, Collected Writings of Erasmus Darwin, viii). In the context of fears over science and atheism – more specifically, fears that they would precipitate a revolution – and the risk of imprisonment for blasphemy, it makes sense that Darwin would not have proclaimed utter disbelief in God. Priestman notes that the title page to The Economy of

Vegetation bears an epigraph “from Lucretius’ anti-religious poem De Rerum Natura” (viii), and claims that its appearance “suggests” (viii), by its very presence, the “materialist orientation”

(viii) of The Economy of Vegetation. That, too, makes sense. This is the epigraph as it appears in the front matter to Darwin’s poem:

It Ver, et Venus; Et Veneris praenuncius ante

Pennatus graditur Zephyrus [sic] vestigia propter;

Flora quibus mater, praespergens ante viai

Cuncta, coloribus egregiis et odoribus opplet.64

Rouse translates the lines as follows:

On come Spring and Venus, and Venus’ winged harbinger

marching before, with Zephyr and mother

Flora a pace behind him strewing the whole path in

63 Martin Priestman, Introduction to The Collected Writings of Erasmus Darwin, in vol. 1 (Bristol: Thoemmes, 2004), v. 64 Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden: The Economy of Vegetation. In The Collected Writings of Erasmus Darwin, vol. 1, ed. Martin Priestman (Bristol: Thoemmes Continuum, 2004). 101

front and filling it with brilliant colours and scents.65

The epigraph comes from Book Five of De Rerum Natura. In Book Five, Lucretius treats of

Epicurus’ discovery of a “reasoned plan of life which is now called Wisdom” (De Rerum Natura,

5.9-10). Lucretius compares that discovery to “ancient discoveries accounted godlike, made by

others” (5.13). The difference is that the “good life was impossible without a purged mind”

(5.18). Epicurus was responsible for bringing “sweet consolations of life to soothe our minds”

(5.21). He seems to be “a god” (5.19), and also a rival to Hercules (5.22). Lucretius means to

teach, according to Epicurean doctrine, “how all things are bound to abide in that law by which

they were made, and how they are impotent to annul the strong statutes of time” (5.56-58), i.e.,

the law of mortality. Lucretius asserts “that the world was certainly not made for us by divine

power: so great are the faults with which it stands endowed” (5.198-99). He considers why the

moon does not daily occupy the same “place and station” (5. 734), given the evidence of “so

many things produced in so fixed an order” (5.736), such as the seasons. He expects, then, that

the moon must follow some cycle; this is the “less wonderful” (5.748). Lucretius’ emphasis on

the power of observation to find order in the universe – regardless of his conviction that any such

order is not providential – would have appealed to Darwin as a scientist and as a poet: attention

to patterns aids understanding, whether one is looking at nature, or whether one is reading about

it.

While Priestman regards The Temple of Nature as most like De Rerum Natura, Darwin may have expected more from his final poem than to give readers another Epicurean poem. After

1725, texts that modelled themselves on De Rerum Natura tended to be parodies, meant to

65 Lucretius, De Rerum Natura/ On the Nature of Things, The Loeb Classical Library, trans. W. H. D. Rouse, ed. Martin Ferguson Smith (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), Book 5, lines 731-40. Parenthetical citations reflect book and line numbers in truncated form (e.g., 5.731-40). 102

galvanise Christian readers against the more period-specific threat of atheism through reference

to Lucretius’ Epicureanism. Apart from such parodies, De Rerum Natura and Epicureanism

tended not to be influential in literary works.66 The Loves of the Plants is somewhat suggestive

of a system of horticulture (although the plants are self-sufficient) and perhaps georgic. The

Economy of Vegetation has an epigraph from De Rerum Natura. The Temple of Nature also has

an epigraph, which comes from Virgil’s Aeneid. In eighteenth-century England, the Aeneid was

understood to be the ideal epic, and imitating it was the litmus test for a poet’s abilities. It is

possible that Darwin was progressing through genres to some extent, but also that he was

attempting to alter perceptions about what epic could do.

Priestman claims that Darwin’s generally materialist orientation is “cloaked within an elaborate allegorical ‘machinery’ [which] would be unthreateningly familiar to most readers from Pope’s The Rape of the Lock” (Collected Writings of Erasmus Darwin, viii) – a mock epic.

The idea that Darwin provided his audience with an “unthreateningly familiar . . . elaborate

allegorical ‘machinery’” is a good one, as Lucretius did the same. As we will read later on,

though, while Lucretius also employed such machinery, he did so towards its own destruction; he

was what we might call a demystifier. For now, the question is this: might Darwin’s use of

allegorical machinery have served a purpose other than to reject mythological thinking

categorically? We cannot presume that Darwin’s intent was to promote atheism. He was a

skeptical deist: we have to accept the ambiguity inherent in that position. It is possible that

Darwin’s kind of epic was intended to celebrate mankind’s ability to move towards the answers

that it has sought since the beginning of human history rather than the answers themselves

(mythological or scientific, or in either case absolutely correct).

66 For a discussion of the theorised neo-Epicurean revival, please see the section that begins at the bottom of p. 141 of this dissertation. 103

Priestman writes of The Temple of Nature that it was “really a final synthesis of all the others [i.e., all of Darwin’s major publications, including but not limited to The Botanic

Garden]” (Collected Writings of Erasmus Darwin, xxii). According to his reading, Canto I is about “the big bang and the start of evolution” (xxii) and reminiscent of The Economy of

Vegetation and Zoonomia; Canto II is about “the emergence of sexual reproduction” (xxii) and reminiscent of The Loves of the Plants and Phytologia; Canto III is about “the development of the human mind and hence of society” (xxii) and reminiscent of Darwin’s medical treatise,

Zoonomia, and educational treatise, A Plan for the Conduct of Female Education in Boarding

Schools; and Canto IV is “an attempt to outweigh the awareness of life’s cruelties with a vision of ever-increasing organic happiness” (xxii) and reminiscent of Darwin’s agricultural treatise,

Phytologia. Proving that The Temple of Nature is a final synthesis of anything is an impossible task. But it is reasonable to think of it as the poem at which Darwin was aiming from the beginning – the poem for which he needed to lay the groundwork beforehand, so that it would make sense to most readers, regardless of how much or how little formal education in science and poetry they had had.

Priestman states that The Temple of Nature “derived ultimately from Book 5 of . . .

Lucretius’ great atheist poem De Rerum Natura.”67 He believes that “Darwin’s belated discovery of [Richard Payne] Knight’s poem [The Progress of Civil Society (1796)] [may have] led him to

[write] the astonishing, even bolder, poem we have” (Priestman, “Progress of Society,” 311). It may well be that Knight’s poem increased Darwin’s faith in public receptivity to poems that dealt directly with the issue of progress, and that he wrote so boldly because he knew that he was

67 Martin Priestman, “The Progress of Society? Darwin’s Early Drafts for The Temple of Nature,” in The Genius of Erasmus Darwin, eds. C. U. M. Smith and Robert Arnott (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 311.

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not alone in his views. However, it is not clear from Darwin’s “belated discovery of Knight’s

poem” that his discovery of his own theme was as late as 1796. From The Loves of the Plants

(1789) to The Economy of Vegetation (1792), Darwin moved from detailing vignettes of

individual plant relationships to the vegetable economy of life; detailing the progress of society

was the next logical step. Darwin’s personal correspondence reveals a man who was not keen to

write without reward. He typically referred to sales: for example, writing to Joseph Johnson, he

informed him,

I would not wish to part with the intire [sic] coppy-right [sic], because that would

preclude me from entrenching or altering, or adding to it in any future edition, if such

should be worth while to publish . . . The above refers to [The Loves of the Plants] only,

which you have seen, call’d the second part of the botanical garden; for I would not yet

bind myself to publish the first part, which I believe will consist of but 400 lines, but

which will have three or four times the quantity of notes, and those of more learned, and

newer matter, but half of which are not yet done.68

Darwin’s many in-letter references to his poems at various points from 1789 onward give the

strong sense that he regarded high sales as an indication of general approbation. The knowledge

(or perception) that he was writing for an audience that was able to both understand and

appreciate what he was doing was undeniably a motivation for continuing in the same vein of writing.

68 Erasmus Darwin to Joseph Johnson, May of 1784, in The Collected Letters of Erasmus Darwin, ed. Desmond King-Hele (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 235. 105

Elsewhere, Priestman reiterates that Darwin’s “most Lucretian poem was the posthumous

The Temple of Nature.”69 He posits that it “began life as a projected imitation of the DRN 5’s

[i.e., Book Five] social history . . . but . . . Darwin changed course radically to produce his own,

full-frontally materialist account ‘of the nature of things’” (Priestman, “Lucretius,” 291). He

refers again to Knight’s “[multi-] book didactic poem” (290), adding that it is “avowedly

modelled on DRN” (290), and that it “describ[es] the development of human society” (290). He

also identifies two “British Lucretian moment[s]” (289): 1682 and Creech’s translation, and

1790-1820, “the exceptionally turbulent period normally tagged with the simplifying label

‘Romantic’” (289). Priestman concedes that 1790-1820 “was marked not only by its partial

attempts to transcend the aims of Enlightenment rationalism, but also by many efforts to bring

those aims about” (289). He claims, “In this spirit, all that Epicurus and Lucretius have so

greatly and convincingly said’ was invoked in justification of the first manifesto for atheistic

materialism openly published in Britain . . .” (289).

Darwin’s Community of Belief

As White explains, it is appropriate to discuss the community of Dissent in terms of the

“Calvinist/ Arminian divide.”70 For approximately the first half of the eighteenth century, the

Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists were the face of Dissent.71 Originally Calvinist

(White, 94), Dissent gradually underwent a change. Over time, “the Presbyterian succession of

clergy passed from violent Calvinism, by way of 'Baxterian' Arminianism, to Arianism, and

69 Martin Priestman, “Lucretius in Romantic and Victorian Britain,” in The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, eds. Stuart Gillespie and Philip Hardie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 291. 70 Daniel E. White, Early Romanticism and Religious Dissent (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2006), 94. 71 Sarah Ellenzweig, The Fringes of Belief: English Literature, Ancient Heresy, and the Politics of Freethinking, 1660-1760 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 39.

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thence in many cases to Unitarianism.”72 Clergy, “usually Presbyterian or Independent,” passed

“through the Arminian and Arian heresies to Unitarianism” (White, 38), sometimes also passing

through Socinianism, of which Unitarianism was a form (128). Socinianism held “that God is

one, that Jesus is not God, that nothing in faith can be beyond reason, and that there are no

mysteries in Scripture because the gospel has made mysteries plain.”73 Socinianism was in the process of becoming Unitarianism by the end of the century (Rivers, Reason, Grace, and

Sentiment, 23). In the second half of the eighteenth century, there were two general categories of

Dissent. Orthodox Dissent, or Old Dissent, was backward-facing and conservative: it comprised some Presbyterians (the Calvinist ones), Independents, and Particular Baptists (White, 13), including the “ultra-Calvinist” (92) Sandemanians or Glasites.

Heterodox Dissent was, for the most part, forward-facing and liberal: it included Arminian

Presbyterians, General Baptists, and the Unitarians (12). But it also included Quakers and the

New Dissent, for example, Methodism (Ellenzweig, 39). New Dissent sought to “energize the older denominations, the orthodox branches in particular” (White, 119). Methodists were

“ranters” (Ellenzweig, 39), those people who believed in “private inspiration” (39) as the

corollary of private judgement, personal conscience, and free interpretation of scripture.

Orthodox Dissent regarded the development of Heterodox Dissent as a decline. In contrast, the

Unitarians regarded the development of Heterodox Dissent as positive, progress (38).

Darwin grew up in a Dissenting household. He was sent to Chesterfield School in 1741, at the age of nine. In a letter to his sister Susannah in 1749, he linked two processes, decay and growth, in a single assertion: “All flesh is grass!” (Darwin, Collected Letters, 3), which comes

72 J. M. Robertson, A History of Freethought Ancient and Modern to the Period of the French Revolution, vol. 2, 4th ed. (London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1969), 731. 73 Isabel Rivers, Reason, Grace, and Sentiment: A Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England, 1660-1780, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 23.

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from Isaiah 40:6.74 He began attending medical school at the University of Edinburgh; he took

his MB at Cambridge in 1755; he returned to Edinburgh to complete his formal studies; and he

was a doctor by 1756. It was in this space of a very few years that Darwin lost his father, and

gained two important friends, Johann Albert Heinrich Reimarus and James Keir. A letter that he

wrote following the death of his father helps us to better understand how his beliefs had

developed to that date:

Yesterday’s Post brought me the disagreable [sic] News of my Father’s Departure out of

this sinful World . . .

That there exists a superior Ens Entium that form’d these [sic] wonderful created World

is a mathematical Demonstration. That He influences things by a particular Providence is

not so evident. The Probability to my Notions are [sic] against it, since general Laws

seem sufficient for that End. Shall we say no particular Providence is necessary to roll

this Planet round the Sun, and yet affirm it necessary in turning up Cinque and Quatorze

in shaking a Box of Dies? Or giving each his dayly Bread?

The Light of Nature affords us not a single Argument for a future State: this is the only

one, that it is possible with God, since who made us out of nothing can surely re-create

us. And that He will do this is what we humbly hope.75

Darwin’s letter is Lucretian or Epicurean in that he manages disagreeable news through the

exercise of his reason. He indicates that he cannot cite a single cogent argument for a particular

providence, and the only case that he makes for belief in a future State is an intellectualisation at

74 See The Official King James Bible Online, Isaiah 40:6, from the 1769 Oxford King James Bible Authorized Version, http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Isaiah-40-6/. 75 Erasmus Darwin to Thomas Okes, 17-23 November 1754, in The Collected Letters of Erasmus Darwin, ed. Desmond King-Hele (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 21- 23. 108

best (i.e., not evidence of faith): namely, that a God “who made us out of nothing can surely re-

create us.” He represents a humble hope that God “will do this” which he regards a collective

“we” – including himself – as feeling. At least in the letter, Darwin connects the “superior Ens

Entium” – an essence of essences or prime mover, which created the world but which may or

may not intervene in it – with God. As his statement about the Ens Entium shows, he lacked

sufficient physical evidence to confirm or refute the idea of life after death. If he did humbly

hope for his father’s afterlife, it was probably in the sense that he was doubtful of the reality but

concerned for his father’s sake.

Darwin wrote the letter while he was emotional. In Charles Darwin’s assessment of the

letter, “The expression ‘disagreeable news’ applied to his father’s death, sounds very odd to our

ears, but he evidently used this word where we should say ‘painful.’”76 He also draws attention

to a letter that his grandfather wrote to Josiah Wedgwood, dated 29 November 1780. In that

letter, the elder Darwin “alludes to the death of his own son” (Charles Darwin, 23) – a medical

student named Charles – and states that “nothing but exertion will dispossess ‘the disagreeable ideas of our loss’” (Charles Darwin, 23). Both letters draw on some of the spirit of Epicurean materialism. However, he locates the remedy for the disagreeableness of a loved one's death not in the knowledge that mortality is a given, but rather in the absence of conclusive evidence that his father will not be recreated – for surely, to be recreated is both technically possible and preferable to the alternative (annihilation). In short, then, Darwin’s letter is not that of an

Epicurean at all, but rather that of a skeptical Deist – the closest modern relative of which is a strong agnostic, a person who does not deny the existence of God, either because he or she has some desire to believe, or because he or she recognises that there is no way to prove it

76 Charles Darwin, Charles Darwin’s The Life of Erasmus Darwin, ed. Desmond King-Hele (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 23. 109

empirically. For many strong agnostics, the question of God’s existence is simply not worth

trying to answer one way or the other. The situation was not so very different for a skeptical

Deist. Although there was no coherent evolutionary theory – no satisfactory physical explanation

for life as we know it – to deny the possibility outright would nonetheless have been unscientific.

If anything, there was more of a sense, in the eighteenth century than now, that God might reveal

himself yet – that if God is in the details, and you collect enough details, there He will be.

Darwin met James Keir in 1754. Two years later, Darwin met Albert Reimarus. Albert was the son of the German philosopher Hermann Samuel Reimarus, “whose deistic philosophy had some influence on Darwin,” as King-Hele supposes (Collected Letters, 26, n.1). Whether or not

Darwin had studied the elder Reimarus' model of deism prior to his letter to Okes is unknown.

However, Darwin acknowledges Albert as the person who taught deism to him and their mutual

friend Keir (Darwin, Collected Letters, 99). In Keir’s estimation of Darwin, he had certain advantages as a student. He writes of his friend that “the classical and literary attainments which he acquired at Cambridge gave him, when he came to Edinburgh, together with his poetical talents and ready wit, a distinguished superiority among the students there” (King-Hele, Erasmus

Darwin: A Life, 16). I read in Keir’s discussion of Darwin's attainments and talents broad reference to university education in England and Scotland at the time (i.e., perhaps a more gentlemanly one from Cambridge and a more practical one from Edinburgh; certainly medical school was a practical choice). But there is also a distinction in Keir’s discussion – implicit at most – between these two categories, attainments and talents. Darwin’s Cambridge education made him different, but it was the combination of the two, having a gentleman’s education and actual talent with words, which made him somehow special.

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The only thing that remained was to combine talent with words and a practical purpose. I agree with Priestman that Darwin had a materialist agenda in writing his poetry. But it is not clear from Darwin’s biography, or from the texts in question, that this was to promote unbelief among believers, to take the solace of faith away from those who happened to possess it.

Famously, he painted the motto “E conchis omnia [all from shells]” on his stagecoach in 1770, and then painted over it to quiet the complaints of Canon Seward (the father of Darwin’s young friend and pupil Anna Seward). Although Darwin and Canon Seward were no longer friendly with each other afterward, Darwin does not appear to have tried to conceal his views about life on earth progressing from simple to complex forms over time. Walking around Lichfield, it does not seem as though Darwin could have kept these views secret for long, even if he had never painted the coach. It appears, rather, that he lived in a very tightly knit place – his house is very near to the cathedral – where it would have been beneficial to everyone to try to keep the peace.

His continued use of the motto as a bookplate shows us that he did not back down as a result of the Canon’s admonishments, and anyone who borrowed a book from his library would have recognised that. There were those who could accept Darwin as he was; others, such as Canon

Seward, stayed away. Conciliatory actions are not about self-abnegation, or even “fitting in,” but rather being sociable – which is integral to identity. We need to consider the difference between

Lucretius’ poem and Darwin’s poems that Priestman has identified – Lucretius’ explicit atheism, versus the other’s conciliatoriness – in terms of sociability, not concealment.

Robert Cockcroft: Darwin’s Art of Living

Robert Cockcroft considers Darwin’s poems in terms of what poems about nature were intended to do. From Hesiod on, poems about nature were supposed to provide an art of living – in Hesiod’s case, cultivating the earth (this reappears in the georgic). Epicureanism provided a

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model for living in a universe in which the gods did not intervene or interfere. It supplied some order to human existence. Lucretius devised a poetic form that was capable of carrying that model. Cockcroft regards Darwin as having “blend[ed] a Lucretian content with a mode of address, description and figuration which comes closer to Ovid.”77 Linnaean botany enabled

Darwin – in The Loves of the Plants – to impart the “implications of . . . ‘love’ and ‘delight’”

(Cockcroft, 145), “whilst seeming merely to flatter the ‘taste’ of a female readership,” and

thereby “subvert[ing] old certainties . . . more subtly than Lucretius” (145). As we will see in

Chapter Three, Ovid parodied Lucretius, and Darwin’s subversion of old certainties involved a

quite different view of nature and man than Lucretius intended. What Darwin was parodying

comes into view when we consider such deviations from Lucretius’ model. Cockcroft’s

argument supports a view of The Loves of the Plants as a poem that has to do with how a

skeptical/ scientific view of the universe can alter the lived experience of (primarily) women. For

Lucretius, women and poetry were troublesome; part of his disparagement of poetry is to

feminise it. For Darwin, although women and poetry could be improved, they were valuable,

and one of the aims of his poems was to facilitate their improvement (as he conceived of it). This

is an idea that I pursue in Chapter Five, with reference not only to Darwin’s poems, but also to

satiric verse about the harmful effects on women and society at large of poetry and botany.

Richard Jenkyns: Darwin’s Didacticism Still An Issue

Richard Jenkyns brings us back to where we started. Writing in response to Cockcroft’s

article, he presumes that Darwin and Lucretius share only a “similarity of motive,” the “poetic

character” of their poems being substantively different. Jenkyns asserts that Lucretius is

“arguing” and “actually doing his philosophy as he writes,” whereas Darwin is simply

77 Robert Cockcroft, “The Didactic Poetry” of Erasmus Darwin,” Form and Content in Didactic Poetry, ed. Catherine Atherton, Nottingham Classical Literature Studies 5 (1997): 145.

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“describing or stating” facts in his poetry. 78 It is sensible to distinguish between De Rerum

Natura as a poem whose purpose is to promote Epicureanism and Darwin’s poetry. It is also sensible to distinguish between an exercise in hypothesis, experiments, and reporting findings

and Darwin’s use of scientific material in his poetry. However, Jenkyns’ assumption that Darwin

“simply” replaces Epicurean philosophy with a celebration of science is reductive. This is to

ignore the past relationship, as natural philosophy, of poetry and science, and the possibility that

Darwin may have been negotiating with poetic tradition and “correcting” Pope, Virgil, and

Lucretius.

M. M. Mahood: Darwin and the Augustan Poetic

Despite these problems – over genre, or lack of a genre, and how De Rerum Natura figures

into things – M. M. Mahood describes Darwin’s poetry as fitting perfectly into the “Augustan

poetic.”79 She characterises Homer as having advocated “informative” (Mahood, 20) poetry,

Virgil’s Georgics as having delivered both “didactic and descriptive” (55) material, and Darwin

as having “met their demands” (21) but also “out-Pope[d] Pope” (25) in the process. She does not identify any specific genre in which Darwin writes. At best, her claim is suggestive of some generic interplay (among Homer’s epic, Virgil’s georgic, Pope’s mock-epic), and perhaps also of

Darwin’s having assembled a kind of epic from the components (thereby “out-Pop[ing] Pope,” who never achieved one).

She dismisses Darwin’s references to “classical myth” (Mahood, 61) as merely

“decorative” (61), rather than as having an important role to play in the delivery of his science

lesson. Without any definition of the Augustan poetic, discussion of the multiple poetic traditions

78 Richard Jenkyns, “Response by Richard Jenkyns,” in Atherton, 166. 79 M. M. Mahood, The Poet as Botanist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 20.

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contained within it, consideration of how the idea of generic decorum influenced their interrelations, and attention to the mythological machinery of Darwin’s poetry, we are at a loss to understand what, exactly, he accomplished, and why it is significant. Homer’s epic, Virgil’s

georgics, Pope’s mock-epic: couched in this list is an Augustan idea, that lower genres than epic

provide information. For Darwin to challenge that idea meaningfully (as opposed to simply

rejecting it and writing whatever he liked) would have required an investigation into existent

didactic poems; he would have had to start somewhere to get somewhere. We know, from

Priestman, that he read Lucretius.

Ashley Marshall: Darwin’s Ludic Theology

Ashley Marshall, in “Erasmus Darwin Contra David Hume,” works from a premise that I

share: “scholars have been unable to explain Darwin’s final project [i.e., The Temple of Nature]

because they have missed or misrepresented the philosophical context to which he actually

belongs”80 as a poet, that is, Deism. She seeks to challenge the prevalent notion that Darwin

worked “almost exclusively within a tradition of scientific rationalism” (Marshall, 89), leaving

“no room in science for the supernatural” (89) – and, moreover, that in his poetry, “science

replaces God as the telos of human struggle” (89; quoting Maureen McNeil, “The Scientific

Muse: The Poetry of Erasmus Darwin”).

In her view, critics have “impatiently disregarded his deism, or have dealt with it in purely

materialistic terms” (Marshall, 89), and this is why they have failed to identify his philosophical

context or tradition correctly. As she notes, Martin Priestman, for example, locates Darwin in a

“position . . . of nominally deistic materialism” (specifically, in Romantic Atheism: Poetry and

Freethought, 1780-1830). Marshall also draws attention to Keith Thomson’s Before Darwin:

80 Ashley Marshall, “Erasmus Darwin contra David Hume,” British Journal for Eighteenth- Century Studies 30 (2007): 90. 114

Reconciling God and Nature, in which he “unhesitatingly presumes Darwin’s atheism” (89). For

such critics, whatever semblance of religious belief Darwin might have had, it was not enough to

take seriously. In purely analytical terms, that makes good sense. It is likely that, for an

eighteenth-century person who wanted to know what makes the world go round and was (at the

very least) unsure of finding the answers in the Bible, materialism would have been an attractive

alternative.

Marshall’s first major claim is that characterising Darwin as a “demystifier, part of a tradition of materialist philosophers” (89), amounts to “a serious misreading of his work” (89).

She concedes that “Darwin was not a Christian” (91), but deems “the charge of atheism, or

coldly materialistic deism” (91), “untenable” (91). Her logic is correct, but we have to bear a few

things in mind. Incomplete atheism does not necessarily entail partial belief: that a person does

not deny the existence of God categorically neither constitutes nor implies an avowal of the

same. Moreover, whether a person lacks belief altogether, or whether he or she has some limited

degree of belief, there is nothing therefore precluding him or her from engaging in

demystification. Should opportunity and interest coincide, he or she may well become a

demystifier. As an additional note, people tend to demystify only things in which they do not

believe and which they regard therefore as impediments to knowledge: not legitimate mysteries

(questions whose answers must wait for the relevant science to find them), but rather ideas and

notions and outright falsehoods that obfuscate rather than enlighten, often to some particular

group’s advantage. So, to summarise, even if Darwin set about to demystify (for example)

religion, he would probably leave a God for which he had even token belief or reverence alone.

It is possible, as Marshall suggests, that Darwin “upholds non-empirical claims to truth and

115 acknowledges the poet’s right to ask hard questions” (96). However, that simply does not mean that the answers were either always non-empirical, or always empirical.

Her second major claim builds upon the first: Darwin’s “philosophy of knowledge”

(Marshall, 89) was not “based on assumptions very similar to those made by David Hume” (89), but was instead based on “a theodicy tradition that extends back to Leibniz, Milton, and Pope, and places him in opposition to the attacks on theodicy made by Voltaire and especially by

David Hume” (90). There is an apparent contradiction here: Darwin was not a Christian, but his writing fits into a specific Christian literary tradition, theodicy. Marshall’s third claim, however, reconciles the issue for the time being: Darwin’s poetry was an “attempt to reconcile science and theology outside of a Christian context” (92). It was “ludic theodicy” (105): it involved manipulating the conventions of theodicy to achieve a new result, presumably one that was commodious to qualified unbelief (which we should be willing to consider that Darwin could have had, if we mean to take his deism seriously). This idea of ludic theology (not theodicy) is interesting precisely because it is suggestive of the indeterminacy inherent in all kinds of accepted knowledge. Supposed facts can turn out to be false. Supposed fancies can turn out to have a basis in reality. As Marshall notes, “critics have failed to notice, have been reluctant to admit, or have set aside as ironic this poem’s [The Temple of Nature’s] sacred dimensions” (90).

That is true. For example, Darwin’s affirmations of the First Cause are often treated as though they have no other function than to throw a thin veil of obfuscation over his words. In those readings, Darwin does not sound like much of a demystifier at all, though that is what a majority of us think that he was – a demystifier. Marshall argues, “Hard facts and scientific evidence do not generate metaphysical belief: by way of contemplation, they deepen an attitude of awe that is

116 natural. The empirical sciences, for Darwin, do not demystify the cosmos. Indeed, he restores the original connection in the term ‘kosmos’ between the order of the world and its beauty” (96).

Marshall seems to assume that demystification necessarily involves damage to metaphysical belief. It seems appropriate to suggest instead that Darwin showed how science could demystify elements of human knowledge without necessarily posing a threat to either faith or beauty.

Marshall writes, “That Erasmus Darwin might have rethought an earlier position, or might even have rendered earlier metaphysical concerns more explicit in this last work [The Temple of

Nature], have never been seriously entertained as possibilities” (90). She does not make it clear which of these possibilities she suspects happened, or provide textual support. She refers to The

Temple of Nature as “reveal[ing] a cosmos that remains enchanted, and in this last poem the supernatural – neither denied nor affirmed in his earlier works – becomes central” (90). In The

Temple of Nature, the cosmos does remain enchanted, if by that word she means mysterious.

There is room in the poem for legitimate mysteries – for asking hard questions, to which Darwin and Enlightenment science did not have the answers. There is also room for the supernatural – or, more correctly, for pagan or Christian accounts of mysteries; the idea is that a scientific one could later build upon such an account, mortaring it with facts. In The Temple of Nature, Darwin affirmed a First Cause – as, indeed, he did in the other poems – but that was not the point of his poetic celebration of science. It was, rather, the proverbial olive branch between science and religion – in this case, the religion of a deistic Dissenter, a person whose belief in God was doubtful, but not necessarily because of science. Doubt, like awe, is an attitude, which strengthens or weakens from person to person. The Temple of Nature has a built-in potential for multiple readings. If Darwin’s readers – as kindred spirits, or parodists, or the curious – hoped to find a Deist, the clues are there (e.g., the epigraph that Priestman cites). His representation of

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nature, however, allows for belief. That is important. There is the sense that Darwin and his more

religious readers are asking the same questions, and that they are on the same side, even if they

do not agree. He seems to have cultivated this cultural climate inside the pages of the poem: his

narrative self is friendly, doting on readers just enough to flatter their intelligence. “Ludic

theodicy” is off the mark by exactly two steps.

That she is indeed in the right area becomes clear in her discussion of deists:

Darwin was, in the most technical sense, a deist, but he fits very poorly our received

notions about eighteenth-century deism. Rarely did eighteenth century deists seek to

explain the ways of their God, for example, or otherwise to stake a claim in the heated

metaphysical debates of the period. Their aim, indeed, was to emphasise the folly of

arguing about things unseen. (Marshall, 108)

There were many deist writers. Marshall refers to John Toland in support of the first part of her statement about deists, i.e., that their habit was not to justify the ways of God to men, which is the function of theodicy. While that is true, the second part of her statement, i.e., that deists were largely uninvolved in metaphysical debates, is inaccurate. As we have seen in the previous chapter, deist writers played a major role in re-shaping religious belief in England in the eighteenth century. Some historians regard that plainly as a loss for the Established Church; others, as a victory for Dissent. What we can glean from all of that is this: it is certainly unlikely that Darwin would have called his work theodicy, or, indeed, that he would have thought of it in those terms. It is much more likely that he was yet another deist writer, staking a claim in the debates of the time. Science seemed to have the potential to extend deism’s reach further than ever before, and to spread a radical proposition, revolution. That is the cultural climate that explains why Darwin put pen to paper – a cultural climate in which fear was blocking science’s

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progress. Darwin was not justifying the ways of God to man. He was justifying science,

connecting it with Dissenters’ contributions to industry in England, and therefore the progress of

the nation itself. He was rallying support from within the ranks. That is not theodicy. That is

something else.

Marshall continues, “Darwin’s deism – and certainly we cannot call him more than a deist

– is radically anomalous. In his poetic account of human history, the poet Darwin extends the

discussion beyond the rational and the natural” (108). To claim that Darwin’s deism was radically anomalous is a leap too far, but he was doing something unique, and it did involve extending the discussion beyond the bare bones of what was knowable empirically. Marshall is painting a picture of Darwin’s “mystical deism” (102) but does not do enough to show where she sees its effects. She mentions The Temple of Nature but does not discuss it in detail. As for the

mystical element of skeptical Deism, there is the sense that Marshall is trying to justify her claim that a non-Christian wrote theodicy, that a person who barely believed in God nonetheless spread the Word. Calling Darwin a “non-Christian” is as untenable as calling him a complete atheist. To be fair, “Christian” is not a word that anyone would use to describe him, because of his Deism.

But “non-Christian” absolutely denies his lifelong membership in the community of Dissent. He was a Deistic Dissenter. The two were not necessarily incompatible. Assuming that Marshall is right and Darwin had a modicum of belief in God, he was not a very good Dissenter, as there were a few basic tenets on which Dissenters were supposed to agree. Canon Seward, for one,

was aware of Darwin’s difference. No one will ever know how many Dissenters actually did

agree to all of the tenets; similarly, many people today identify with this or that religion, but do

not necessarily follow all of its rules. Acknowledging that he was so aligned might do more to

support an argument about theodicy than the chosen alternative. Darwin does juggle mysticism

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and skepticism. In his poetry, everything – literally – begins with mysticism, and skepticism exerts the necessary pressure to help bring stories about the nature of things into line with what can be seen and appreciated (i.e., through science, where and as that is possible). His representation requires both mysticism and skepticism; to omit one would be to stultify human thought, and the progress of society. Marshall proceeds to characterise what she has called

Darwin’s mystical deism: he “steer[s] between the atheistic materialism of Lucretius and the teleological pieties of Newtonianism, [and] positions his ludic theodicy in a non-Christian framework” (105). Early on, she contends that putting Darwin in the materialist tradition is a mistake. Now she associates him with a middle ground between Lucretius and Newton.

Although Marshall does not make the connection, it is becoming clearer that the necessary

“framework” is a genre.

Noel Jackson: A Lucretian Genre, and Darwin

As Noel Jackson argues, the influence of Lucretian materialism on Darwin involves an

actual genre as well as assorted ideas and a spirit of demystification. There are, however, a few

problems with the argument as Jackson articulates it. He pays insufficient attention to the

tradition of what he terms “philosophical poetry.”81 While he calls it the “ugly stepsister of didactic verse” (Jackson, 171), he does not proceed to make, either explicitly or implicitly, any distinctions among De Rerum Natura, Darwin’s poetry, and eighteenth-century didactic poetry.

As a related issue, while Jackson acknowledges that Darwin’s science has “radical political

implications” (174) which are also “espoused” (174) in his poetry, and that the “political and

aesthetic briefs against Darwin are obviously related at some level” (174), he does not pursue

that apparent obviousness to any conclusion as to how and why. Nor does he attend to what he

81 Noel Jackson, “Rhyme and Reason: Erasmus Darwin’s Romanticism,” Modern Language Quarterly 70.2 (2009): 171. 120

describes as “the formal logic of the genre” (175) – as in, philosophical poetry – that he posits

Darwin as having “popularized” (175) and the extent to which it was amenable to Darwin’s

brand of “radicalism” (174). Instead, Jackson treats of a monolithic genre, which he supposes to

have reached its “inglorious climax in the last quarter of the eighteenth century” (173) and then

been “discredited, subsumed by other poetic forms and modes of expression, and largely

forgotten” (173), as the direct result of “Darwin’s failure to resolve what Plato called the ‘ancient

quarrel’ between philosophers and poets” (172). Jackson’s argument has helped to link Lucretius

with Darwin’s poetry and fostered interest in its genre. For example, Devin S. Griffiths – in his

recent article on Darwin’s use of analogy – cites Jackson in the context of the possibility that The

Botanic Garden may involve “generic mixing” 82 of some nature, and proposes that any such

generic mixing may well have been a “contributing factor in Darwin’s devaluation” (646). To

sum up Jackson’s argument, he indicates that “Lucretian hedonism” was responsible for both the

poem’s “hybridity” (646) and “Darwin’s politicizing poetics” (646). Elsewhere, Griffiths refers

to The Botanic Garden as a “mixture of poetry and science, sex and Henry Fuseli engravings”

(645) that uses “rhyming iambic couplets and [the] Latinate syntax of Augustan poetry” (645-

46). He also refers to Darwin’s “epic vision” (660). The philosophical poetry and didactic verse

toward which Jackson gestures remain to be examined. We need to ground the important concept

of generic mixing in something more specific than Augustan poetry. To consider the tradition of

English didactic poetry, the particular form of De Rerum Natura, relevant eighteenth-century aesthetics and politics, and the perceptions that Darwin was radical will lead us back to an ancient quarrel over a specific genre of poetry.

Neglected Critics: On Darwin and Lucretius, and Didactic Poetry

82 Devin S. Griffiths, “The Intuitions of Analogy in Erasmus Darwin’s Poetics,” SEL 51.3 (Summer 2011): 645. 121

Mid-twentieth-century critics Bernard Blackstone, Elizabeth Sewell, Irwin Primer, James

Venable Logan, and Donald Hassler are very seldom cited in contemporary criticism on

Darwin’s poems. Their work represents the poems as deserving more attention than they tended to attract from critics in the mid-twentieth century. They cultivate sympathy for him as a

speculative thinker, whose diverse interests coloured everything that he wrote. Their language is

guarded, because the question of genre seems intractable: “Darwin’s verse deserves a somewhat

closer scrutiny than it has received up to now from the historian of ideas,”83 for example. That it

“made its mark on Blake, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats” (Blackstone, 13)

suggests as much. However, when Blackstone writes that Darwin’s verse – not his poetry, not his

poems – deserves a closer look, he means from “the historian of ideas” (13), not the literary

critic. When he deems Darwin’s verse “by no means negligible as writing” (13), he means, more

or less, both that there is a lot of it and that it is rich in ideas. He is not proposing that Darwin

should be considered a great poet.

As Primer writes,

The traditional abuse and derision aimed at his poetry begins with the Tory satirists of the

later 1790’s – especially in “The Loves of the Triangles” (1798), their famous satire on

Darwin’s Loves of the Plants – and continues directly into [the twentieth] century. The

“fustian, false taste, and . . . frigidity” that Saintsbury found in Darwin may be regarded

as characteristic of Darwin’s reception earlier in our century.84

Darwin’s modern critics treat “Darwin’s poetry . . . with a greater sympathy and respect than it

has elicited since the 1790’s [sic] or in R. L. Edgeworth’s posthumous memoirs (1820)” (Primer,

83 Bernard Blackstone, The Consecrated Urn: An Interpretation of Keats in Terms of Growth and Form (New York: Longmans, Green, 1959), 13. 84 Irwin Primer, “Erasmus Darwin’s Temple of Nature: Progress, Evolution, and the Eleusinian Mysteries,” Journal of the History of Ideas (XXV: 1964): 58.

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58). However, the disadvantage of focussing attention on the harsh manner of delivery of satirists

and Saintsbury instead of on the basis for their claims is that Darwin has become an object of sympathy, wounded more so than wronged as a writer; to treat his poetry differently seems an act

of generosity (and condescension), not necessarily one of correction. According to Sewell, “in

literary criticism, Erasmus Darwin ha[d] had no recognition at all”85 by the mid-twentieth

century. Unfortunately, the judgements of his satirists and of Saintsbury have been passed on to

us virtually intact. If it is true that Darwin’s poetry has all the “fustian, false taste, and . . .

frigidity” of neo-classical imitation and none of the accomplishments of the Romantics, then any

merit that it does have must be strictly limited to the ill-kept promise of its ideas, and the

purview of that aforementioned historian.

The critics tacitly agree with that assessment, and so they focus on ascribing good

intentions to Darwin’s choice of general form: Blackstone credits Darwin’s “rococo

imagination” with “cloth[ing] a scientific vision in neo-classic garb” (Consecrated Urn, 13);

Sewell, Darwin’s “orphic mind” (Orphic Voice, 196) with strengthening the inherent link

between Linnaeus’s botany and myth; and Primer, building on Blackstone’s and Sewell’s

arguments, Darwin’s adoption of myth as both his “subject” (“Erasmus Darwin’s Temple of

Nature,” 60) and his “method” (62), because it brings about a partial “mythopoe[sis]” (62). (See also Orphic Voice 224-225; Sewell refers to myth solely in terms of Darwin’s method.)

Blackstone’s, Sewell’s, and Primer’s arguments build progressively on a single shared idea:

Darwin meant to transform a subject of natural philosophy into poetry infused with moral and didactic force. Of course, ascribing the intention to Darwin does not mean that he succeeded, or

“that [his poetry] succeeds in satisfying the standards of modern formalist criticism” (Primer,

85 Elizabeth Sewell, The Orphic Voice: Poetry and Natural History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960), 221.

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75), which expects that even the most original poem resembles others in the same established poetic genre clearly.

A rigid view of genre is the greatest impediment to the study of Darwin’s poetry. Primer supposes that “the case for Darwin will appear stronger if we agree to look for his poetry not in his effete Popean couplets but rather in the larger design of his poems as books including verse, notes, and illustrations” (59) – in other words, the case for Darwin is not strong, but by redirecting focus from specific details of execution to general organisation, we may make some headway. I would argue that focussing on Darwin’s “imagination” at the expense of his “reason,” and on a “larger design” that somehow fails to account for very well structured Popean couplets, is a mistake. Ignoring (or pretending to ignore) them can destabilise otherwise interesting arguments about Darwin’s forward thinking about a variety of social issues and poetry’s role in precipitating change. Darwin’s verse and prose do not call his writing ability into question: the couplets are too good, and also too much the rich fabric of the poems, to be merely schoolboy habit or homage to Pope. They are, more likely, a part of Darwin’s design, his chosen format, his chosen genre. If that genre is not immediately apparent, that does not necessarily mean that it is nonexistent. The best plan is to look to the “larger design of [Darwin’s] poems as books including verse, notes, and illustrations.” For doing so is the only way of getting to the more important task of reading Darwin’s poetry as poetry rather than as a record of failure.

As we have read, Blackstone remarks that Darwin’s poetic works are not negligible. In so doing he calls attention to the scope of what Darwin’s poetry attempts to accomplish (as well as its extremely long word-count): namely, the union of science and poetry. Of the “result”

(Blackstone, 13), it seems “of necessity incongruous, but the very incongruity is portentous, ‘like the hindquarters of an elephant,’ and like those formidable masses it can pull its weight” (13): in

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other words, while it is bound to be awkwardly disproportional, its sheer strength is perhaps all

the more impressive for this reason. Blackstone says of Darwin that he “is in the line of Hesiod,

Lucretius, Virgil” (xiii) but also that he “hints” (3), and “no more than hints, at the return to a tradition” (3) – this by “taking his motto [for “The Loves of the Plants”] from Virgil” (3).

Blackstone claims that his “quarrel” (28) is not the elephant in the room: he does not object to

Darwin’s versification of science, for “Lucretius and Virgil had done as much; and produced good poetry” (28). Rather, he objects to Darwin’s doing so in such a way as makes one conceive of “nitrous acid in terms of human passion” (28), because this leads to conceiving of “human passion in terms of nitrous acid” (28). Blackstone determines that Darwin’s poetry “bears the impress of a powerful if limited mind” (23), which mistakenly supposes that “everything can be explained – a dangerous attitude for a poet” (23). Whereas “mystery is abhorrent to [Darwin]”

(4), it is vital to Blackstone’s conception of poetry. Blackstone agrees with Keats that “Darwin’s

science has no place in poetry” (308). He asserts with easy resignation: “learned treatises, and

not poems, are the place for displays of analytical erudition. Science and poetry inhabit disparate

worlds: let them live amicably apart” (308). Despite his fascination with Darwin’s elephantine

poetry, he sees its ambitiousness as its weakness.

Blackstone’s cursory listing of Hesiod, Lucretius, and Virgil is not unusual, in the sense

that it reflects (to some extent) the traditional, chronological, grouping of epic poets as a

homogeneous group. His reference to “a” tradition, though, is suggestive of a plurality of epic

traditions. Blackwell is being selective, not forgetful. That Blackwell omits Homer from

consideration (silently) suggests that he thinks of Hesiod and Lucretius as more relevant to the

study of Darwin: there is a tradition there, and some indications that Darwin was involving

himself in it. The apparently imperfect imitation of that tradition, or perhaps genre, seems to

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have been an accident. Blackstone’s inclusion of Virgil suggests that he thinks of Hesiod and

Lucretius as influential only through whatever connection they have with him. In other words, he

is committed to the idea that even if there were two separate epic traditions, these resolved into

one with Virgil, and that was the end of the matter (or should have been so).

Primer, too, mentions Lucretius in a cursory way – in a footnote. He draws attention to

portions of Peyrard’s “atheistic essay” De la nature et de ses lois which “resemble Darwin’s

views closely,” and notes “the strong Lucretian influence in both” (Primer, 72-73), though he

does not describe any such. Of course, a comparison between an “atheistic essay” and “Darwin’s

views” does not imply anything about what genre he chose to write in, or, particularly, why.

Primer remarks, “The profound influence of Lucretius on eighteenth-century poetry has received

relatively little attention from scholars of literature and the history of ideas” (72-73). Although that is true, there has been some interest in how Lucretius, as an atheist poet, might have acted as a role model for Darwin.

Logan is specific on the subject of connections between Lucretius and Darwin. He notes that Darwin quotes from De Rerum Natura (Logan, 88), that Darwin and Lucretius have some similar scientific ideas about “motion” (26), and that there are some “schem[atic]” parallels

(123). But Logan supposes that Darwin only “remembered his Lucretius well enough to quote from him” (122), and that he only agreed with Lucretius’ ideas insofar as eighteenth-century science seemed to support them (121). He remarks, “It is clear that the ghost of Lucretius brushes each page of poetry that Darwin composed, but, ghostlike, the influence of the Latin poet is more pervasive than factual and detailed” (121). In Logan’s view, Lucretius supplied Darwin with little more than the idea of a scientific poem (135). In contrast, Darwin’s poetry “links up with that long line of eighteenth-century didactic poets who fed the public’s capacious maw of

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curiosity with every kind of tidbit of knowledge” (123). According to Logan, Darwin was

probably thinking about this “genre of [eighteenth-century] didactic poetry” (124), which generally “dealt with gardening and agricultural subjects” (124), but which also includes “long, dull, didactic poems on the creation and structure of the world and its inhabitants” (133), with backward-facing scientific theories “propping up the structure of traditional theology” (134).

Logan ventriloquises Darwin: “This stuff is nonsense! I will write a poem that is really scientific” (135). Logan declares that Lucretius provides Darwin with little more than “certain factual similarities” (121) that are “scarce worth the gathering” (121), and “casual literary allusions” (122) that are scarcely indicative of anything more than a half-decent education. One is left to assume that Darwin’s chosen genre was eighteenth-century didactic poetry; more specifically, georgic. That is, until Logan defines Darwin’s poems as “nothing less than full- blown epics” (132). Logan considers Darwin’s use of rhymed heroic couplets a good choice for

“a less gifted poet” (130) who is “too patently didactic” (147) to be a “genius” like Lucretius

(147). He also considers Darwin as an overly ambitious poet, in contrast to a certain pastoral poet who “is modest enough to cast doubt on his achievement in enriching poetry” (128) along with teaching a science lesson (namely, James Grainger, author of Sugar Cane). What Logan has done, effectively, is to imply that De Rerum Natura is a brilliant epic, whereas Darwin’s poems are over-the-top attempts at epic.

Donald Hassler, too, considers Darwin’s use of rhymed heroic couplets. He wonders, was

Darwin was making a bid “as a modern Pope, or a modern Lucretius”?86 He muses, “(He was

good . . . with the heroic couplet, and he was good with the scientific-didactic poem)” (Hassler,

8). That is the first indication that the genre of De Rerum Natura was not epic as we know it after

86 Donald Hassler, The Comedian as the Letter D: Erasmus Darwin’s Comic Materialism (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), 8. 127

all: that it had an “ambitious,” scientific aim, that it was “patently” didactic – and that this was

what Darwin was emulating, at least to some extent. The issue of his heroic couplets versus his

Lucretian influence is one that recurs in Darwin criticism; the idea is that genre depends upon a

particular metrical unit, and Darwin appears to have been writing mock-epic or epic, not a poem in the style of De Rerum Natura.87

The criticism that I have discussed in this last section may possibly be neglected because it

seems conclusive in its dismissal of a generic connection between Lucretius and Darwin. In

actuality, the criticism opens up a whole vista for Darwin scholars. Darwin was engaging with a

tradition or genre that is presumed dead: as we will read in the next chapter, it is called didactic

epic. It began with Hesiod and supposedly reached its apogee with Lucretius. Darwin was also

undoubtedly engaging with an eighteenth-century poetic kind: didactic poetry. It is presumed to

follow Virgil without exception. So, we still have a problem, but didactic epic and didactic

poetry provide the means for understanding and appreciating the strangeness of Darwin’s poetry.

My claim here is that Darwin used didactic epic as a general model for writing back to the

eighteenth-century English tradition of didactic poetry in three poems, to show that didactic

poetry could be epic in its own way. There is not an epic hero in any of Darwin’s poems

(although there are references to Linnaeus and others). The impact of science on humanity is the

focus. Each of Darwin’s poems is more didactic and more epic than the last. It as if he was

applying additional lenses over a single slide: not only is nature revealed in greater detail,

science is revealed as nothing more or less than what it is to be human – to ask questions and

seek answers. Engaging with science yields the tools for progress, and progress is heroic.

87 For more on this subject, see “The Matter of Meter” in this dissertation, beginning on p. 179. 128

"The word 'mundane' has come to mean 'boring' and 'dull,’ and it really shouldn't — it should mean the opposite. Because it comes from the Latin mundus, meaning 'the world'. And the world is anything but dull: The world is wonderful. There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality. And yet today science is under attack."88

Chapter 4:

Reviving and Revising Lucretian Didactic Epic: One Genre, Two Problems, Plural Traditions

In the previous chapters, I discussed Darwin’s Dissenter upbringing and Deistic beliefs as an adult, and his membership in predominantly Dissenting groups, particularly Johnson’s circle of writers. I represented him, therefore, as a Deistic Dissenter: that is, as a person whose Deism

(which may or may not have been covert atheism) did not remove him from the community in which he was raised and in which he remained active throughout his life. Dissent and Deism overlapped to the extent that Dissent accepted Deists so long as they were – or appeared to be – sincerely deistic. While there were occasionally doubts over Darwin’s sincerity (see my section on Priestley’s complaint against him), I believe that the combination of his apologies and activities were sufficient to allay them. In the final analysis, Dissent and Deism had a shared goal: to obtain, legally and practically, religious freedom and tolerance. The common pursuit of that goal was of more importance than individual differences of belief. With reference to the kinds of writing that Johnson was interested in publishing, I looked into Dissent and Deism’s shared interest in promoting religious freedom and tolerance within and for heterodox

Christianity, their historic role in supporting and preserving the Protestant succession (with

88 Richard Dawkins, The Enemies of Reason, television documentary in two parts, from Channel 4, 2007, both on Google Videos, MPEG video, Episode 1: “Slaves to Superstition,” 48 minutes, 41:24 mark, http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7218293233140975017#.

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seventeenth-century Puritans as their mutual forebears), and the progress of science. I also looked into how Dissent, Deism, and science were perceived: effectively as vehicles for the

spread of atheism, libertinism, and revolution. I considered Coleridge’s and Wordsworth’s

complaints against Darwin’s poetry, finding these to be about his (perceived) lack of religious

commitments and religiosity of verse rather than his didacticism, scientific content, or poetic

ability. I gave attention to key parodies, showing that Darwin’s poetry was regarded as being in

the eighteenth-century tradition of didactic poetry, and as having dangerous implications for

morality and monarchy. I argued that Darwin’s close affiliations with Dissenting circles were

more relevant to his poetry than were his personal beliefs. It is unlikely that he would have

sought to promote atheism and revolution through his poetry. The common goal of Dissenters

was to represent their desire for religious freedom and tolerance as politically nonthreatening and ultimately beneficial. I worked with and against modern criticism of Darwin’s poetry in terms of his presumed atheism, its apparent impact on his poetic purpose, and various genres with which his writing has been linked. I recommended thinking about Darwin’s poetry as engaging with the writing traditions of Dissent and Deism, eighteenth-century English didactic poetry, and

Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, with the genre of didactic epic as the basic model.

In this chapter, I deal with the areas of research outside of Darwin criticism that are most relevant to my reading of his poetry. I consider the tradition and genre of Lucretian didactic epic and the tradition of eighteenth-century English didactic poetry (in plural genres, including mock- didactic epic, but not didactic epic proper). I argue that it is possible to conceive of eighteenth- century poetry that was involved with the tradition of English didactic poetry while being written in the genre of didactic epic. I also provide a synthesis of my reading on didactic epic’s features as a genre (in Chapter 5, I will consider which ones Darwin retained, which ones he changed,

130 and how). With reference to selected translations and parodies of De Rerum Natura, I show that the poem’s virtual atheism was upsetting to eighteenth-century readers. With reference to

Richard Polwhele’s The Unsex’d Females – in which he praised Darwin’s kind of poetry

(without identifying it with Lucretius) but took issue with women reading botany books of all sorts – I consider how Lucretian didactic epic’s unambiguous representation of the poet

(Lucretius) teaching a specific kind of reader (Memmius, a man who has yet to become an

Epicurean) would have been problematic for Darwin. I then consider the written traditions of

Dissent and Deism (non-literary) and the tradition of erotic satire (in plural genres).

The terms that I use in this chapter are defined as follows: “Lucretian didactic epic” refers to Lucretius’ adaptation of the pre-existing genre of didactic epic in creating the poem De Rerum

Natura. Lucretius promoted a specific science or philosophy of nature (Epicureanism) as a replacement for poetic mythology, which he blamed for fostering religious superstition.

“Eighteenth-century English didactic” refers to poems in various genres, not including either epic or didactic epic (Lucretian or otherwise). There are some eighteenth-century didactic poems that promote a science (but not a philosophy of nature). There are also some parodies of

Lucretian didactic epic, which use the genre to promote Christianity. These parodies ridicule De

Rerum Natura, which the authors regarded (anachronistically) as blasphemous at best, and as a potentially corruptive influence on morality at worst. “Eighteenth-century erotic satire” employs botanical metaphor. The tradition includes but is not limited to satiric texts (poetry and prose) on botany, female reading, male effeminacy, and sexual libertinism. Arguably, erotic satire and eighteenth-century didactic poetry can overlap at times.

Many critics in the field of classics consider De Rerum Natura to be a “didactic epic” rather than a “didactic” epic, i.e., as a poem in a genre of epic whose essential aim was to be

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didactic, whereas other kinds of epic were didactic only insofar as their respective aims allowed.

The critics have grounded their research in evidence of a tradition of didactic epic. As we will

learn, De Rerum Natura not only was part of that tradition, but also revived and redefined the

genre. I contend that Darwin modified Lucretian didactic epic. Whereas Lucretius’ poem comes

to us as a single poem in six books, Darwin’s didactic epic poetry was literally a multi-book

endeavour. I treat The Loves of the Plants, The Economy of Vegetation, and The Temple of

Nature as three didactic epic poems, because they can be read separately. In addition, there are

some significant differences among them as didactic epics. The division between each poem and

the next reflects a shift in the focus of Darwin’s reinterpretation of Lucretian didactic epic. To

judge the poems as didactic epics is not to assume that they do not take elements from other

traditions. They do – and each of them superficially resembles another genre (which helps to

explain the variety of genres that critics have applied to them).

Didactic Epic as a Tradition of Poetry

The first tradition of didactic epic included Hesiod (Works and Days), Xenophanes,

Parmenides, and Empedocles (On Nature).89 It was characterised by an inspired sage, an ethical

system, and extensive discourse about it.90 Those characteristics can potentially be thought of as

generic, though it is not clear from my reading that they are codified anywhere (in either classic

texts or contemporary ones). If we look to Works and Days for illustration, we find that Hesiod –

writing as himself – held forth on the uses to which men’s days should be put, in accordance

89 Gian Biagio Conte, Genres and Readers: Lucretius, Love Elegy, Pliny’s Encyclopedia, trans. Glenn W. Most (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 3. 90 Monica Gale, “Didactic Epic,” in A Companion to Latin Literature, ed. Stephen Harrison (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), 105. 132

with the wishes of a god: namely, Zeus.91 The second tradition of didactic epic included

Callimachus’ Aetia, as well as poems by Aratus and Nicander. This second tradition did not

involve an ethical system (Gale, “Didactic Epic,”105). Callimachus, for example, connected

customs and rites with legends of origin in four books of elegiac verse, of which only fragments

remain.92 Aratus’ and Nicander’s poems were more scientific in orientation. The third tradition

began with De Rerum Natura. Lucretius derived the entertainment value of poetry from

Callimachus, and the imperative of representing “direct ethical engagement” (Gale, “Didactic

Epic,” 105) from (especially) Empedocles. For Lucretius, however, the ethical system at stake,

Epicureanism, took a view of the universe in which the gods were uninvolved in earthly matters:

this was new. As well, his emphasis on a philosophy of nature – which we can think of as the

science of the time – suggests that the poetry of Aratus and Nicander influenced him.

Poetry provided Lucretius with the means for popularising his chosen philosophy. This

was, however, a highly unusual choice for an Epicurean. Epicurus distrusted muthos [myth] wholeheartedly.93 Like other kinds of epic, De Rerum Natura features myths, the primary one

being that of the Earth Mother. However, Lucretius presented myths in order to divest them of

meaning, and to promote the philosophy of Epicureanism in its place. In his view, Epicureanism

was the one true way of looking at the natural world and mankind’s place within it. In contrast,

myth was nothing more or less than superstition, which must be rejected as false, because it

91 Hesiod, Works and Days, trans. Catherine M. Schlegel and Henry Weinfield (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006). On page 405, Hesiod appeals to Perses, “if you’re willing, I shall tell the gist of another tale:/ How, from a single origin, mortals and gods are sprung” (106- 07). Hesiod represents the days as having been sent forth by Zeus, and Perses’ need of marking the fact, and getting himself a household, a woman, and an ox, in that order. 92 See Callimachus: Aetia, Iambi, Lyric Poems, Hecale, Minor Epic and Elegiac Poems, and Other Fragments, trans. C. A. Trypanis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975). 93 Katharina Volk, The Poetics of Latin Didactic: Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid, Manilius (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 53. 133

constitutes the last barrier between Epicureanism and the masses. Lucretian didactic epics

include Manilius’ Astronomica, the anonymous Aetna, and Grattius’ Cynegetica. Ovid parodied

the form in the Metamorphoses. Although Virgil recuperated something of didactic epic’s

philosophical spirit in the Georgics, he subordinated it to the goals of georgic and limited its

focus to the agricultural arts.

All that is known conclusively about Lucretius is that his contemporary Cicero and

Cicero’s brother read and remarked on his poem in 54 B. C.94 Although Cicero had “rather less

to say” (Levene, 32) than Lucretius on Epicurean materialism, he is responsible for over seventy-

five percent of the extant literature of the Late Republican Period (32). Cicero was ultimately

deemed “sterile and derivative” (31), and the same charge was laid against “the less prolific

Lucretius” (36). Although Lucretius was highly influential on Virgil’s Georgics and Aeneid, the

“primary image of the [epic] genres was formed out of the works created [by this] imperial

successor [i.e., Virgil].”95

De Rerum Natura in Eighteenth-century England

De Rerum Natura is commonly understood to have been rediscovered in Europe in 1417.96

De Rerum Natura made its way around England between approximately 1650 and 1725. In 1675,

the first English edition of the poem (in the original Latin) was published. Translations by John

Dryden, Lucy Hutchinson, and Thomas Creech followed. Creech’s translation was published in

1682; it went through three editions in about two years and became the standard reference for the eighteenth century. Dryden’s translation of select fragments was next, in 1685. Creech’s edition

94 D. S. Levene, “Chapter 2: The Late Republican/ Triumviral Period: 90-40 BC,” in A Companion to Latin Literature, ed. Stephen Harrison (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2005), 32. 95 Sander M. Goldberg, “Chapter 1: The Early Republic: The Beginnings to 90 BC,” in A Companion to Latin Literature, 39. 96 It has been brought to my attention that a few medieval authors seem to have had access to the poem and that there are earlier partial manuscripts than the one found in 1417. 134

in the original Latin appeared in 1695.97 The posthumous 1714 edition of his translation interpolated portions of Dryden’s text, and it went through six editions by mid-century (Mayo

65, 101). During Darwin’s lifetime, De Rerum Natura continued to be read widely, in both the

Latin editions and English translations. Many readers admired the verses to some degree for

various reasons – for example, Hutchinson (more on her annotated translation to follow).

Newtonian atomism was dominant, and the general public was interested in Enlightenment

science. But, whereas Newtonian atomism was a Christian articulation of materialism,

Epicureanism was not simply godless but anti-religious. According to Thomas Franklin Mayo,

The Royal Society, a (predominantly) low-church Anglican entity, rejected Epicureanism (Mayo,

32). There were positive responses to aspects of the poem’s Epicureanism, but its anti-religious nature was problematic.

English Didactic Poetry and Lucretian Didactic Epic: When the Student Becomes

the Master

The epigraph for this chapter comes from a recent miniseries, in which the English biologist Richard Dawkins challenges the notion (among others) that the use of one’s reason spells the destruction of vital mysteries, without which life is less interesting; as Blackstone would have it, little more than the bubbling of nitrous acid. In Dawkin’s view, reason aims to reveal what is so; whatever is demonstrably not so, is dispelled; and all that is ever destroyed in the process is a fantasy of reality. “The world is wonderful. There's real poetry in the real world.

Science is the poetry of reality”: Dawkins’ series of assertions is meant to make science more appealing to its detractors, to represent it as a form of poetry (which, presumably, they prefer).

His determination to represent science not only as “real poetry in the real world” but also as “the

97 Thomas Franklin Mayo, Epicurus in England (1650-1725), PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1934. (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International, 1983), 21, 58, 74, 78, 101. 135 poetry of reality [italics mine].” Dawkins refers to Darwin’s poetry specifically in his most recent book: “Unlike his evolutionist grandfather Erasmus, whose scientific verse was

(somewhat surprisingly, I have to say) admired by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Charles Darwin was not known as a poet, but he produced a lyrical crescendo in the last paragraph of On the

Origin of Species.”98 Dawkins does not explain why he is surprised by Coleridge’s and

Wordsworth’s (initial) admiration for Darwin’s poetry. In light of his assessment of science as

“the poetry of reality,” it seems unlikely that Dawkins is critiquing the scientific element of

Darwin’s poetry. If “poetry of reality” can apply to the last paragraph of On the Origin of Species as well as to scientific verse, it is not by virtue of data, but by virtue of some poetic quality. For

Dawkins, Charles’ Darwin’s paragraph is superior because of its lyrical crescendo; it seems that the poetry of reality must nonetheless evoke some form of poetry. Although there are actual objects for consideration in nature, reality is a human construct. Both science and poetry involve representation. Both can represent nature with varying degrees of fidelity. In either case, they give us insight into our relationship with nature. Darwin was engaging with the poetry of nature:

English didactic poetry and Lucretian didactic epic.

Paul Davis identifies the collective “impetus”99 for English didactic poetry: Chapman’s

“idiosyncratic rendering” of Hesiod’s Works and Days (1618); Cooke’s translation of the same

(1728); Creech’s complete translation of Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things (1682); and

Dryden’s translation of Virgil’s The Georgics (1697). In his view, “the first wave” (Davis, 191) of English didactic poetry includes Philips’ Cyder (1708), Smart’s The Hop-Garden (1752), and

98 Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (New York: Free Press, 2009), 399. 99 Paul Davis, “Didactic Poetry,” in The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English, vol. 3: 1660-1790, eds. Stuart Gillespie and David Hopkins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 191.

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Dyer’s The Fleece (1757). He mentions Gay’s Trivia (1716), Pope’s Essay on Man (1733-34),

and Cowper’s Task (1785), remarking that these poems “engage more or less intermittently with

the mode” (191). He attributes that to “the spread of the ideology of ‘politeness’ during the early

decades of the eighteenth century” (192), which “led some translators to dilute the instructive

force of ancient didactic” (192). Around mid-century, he explains, “other [translators] stripped

the mode of its poetical beauties” (193). And, by the 1790s, “only social reformers . . . used verse

for flagrantly instructive ends” (193). Davis does not make any distinction between Hesiod and

Lucretius on the one hand and Virgil on the other. It is also unclear what he means by “mode”

and “ancient didactic.” The Anti-Jacobin’s association of Darwin’s poem with Pope’s Essay on

Man shows that while it prefers the latter it does not regard it as either polite or uninterested in

social reform.

Cyder, The Hop-Garden, and The Fleece are georgics. As Johnson’s Dictionary (1755)

illustrates, in eighteenth-century England, Virgil’s didactic mode took priority over overt

didacticism. Johnson defined “didactick” and “didascalick”: “Didactick” is a noun, and “a

didactick poem” is “a poem that gives rules for some art; as the Georgicks”; “didascalic” is more

of an adjective, and didascalic verse is “preceptive, didactick; giving precepts in some art.”100 In

the end, a didactick poem and didascalics were one and the same. From Johnson’s use of “as,”

we can infer that he viewed Virgil’s Georgics as the exemplar of the didactic poem, and not

simply as an example. Johnson provided a quotation from Matthew Prior to illustrate the use of

the second word: “I found it necessary to form some story, and give a kind of body to the poem:

100 Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English language; in which the words are deduced from their originals, and illustrated in their different significations by examples from the best writers; to which are prefixed, A history of the language, and an English grammar (London, pr. by Strahan for J. and P. Knapton [and 4 others], 1755), 592. Bruce Peel Special Collections, University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada), PE 1620 J69 1755 folio v.1. 137

under what species it may be comprehended, whether didascalick [georgic] or heroic [epic], I

leave to the judgment of the criticks” (Johnson, 592). Prior’s words display a tension between the

two roles of poet and critic: one supplies the story, and the other determines how to classify it.

We already have the requisite theory of genres to account for apparent perversities of form

as innovations. Additionally, classicists have described the tradition of didactic epic, and

enumerated the salient and non-salient features of the genre. We need, then, to rethink the

eighteenth-century relationship between the traditions of didactic epic and English didactic

poetry, the one (supposedly) dead shortly after Lucretius, and the other in death throes by

Darwin’s time.

Interplay Between Didactic Poetry and Didactic Epic

Challenging or changing tradition was a major aspect of the Augustan poetic. Traditions

and genres and ways of writing are never untouchable. At worst, rather than being dead, they

remain in a state of rest, until someone happens along, wakes them up, and puts them to work in

some way. Ralph Cohen discusses English didactic poetry in the context of generic decorum. As

he explains, eighteenth-century critics regarded genres as free to intermix, though within certain

specified bounds. For example, Joseph Trapp viewed heroic epic as “includ[ing] every other

kind” including didactic.101 And Thomas Tickell, who viewed didactic as the “more noble part of

poetry,” regarded it as “second to epic alone” (Cohen, 40), just as The Georgics are second to the

Aeneid alone. Accordingly, Cohen refers didactic to the “smaller poetic didactic forms,” or

“elements” of the “larger forms,” of georgic, epistle, and satire (1): for The Aeneid is “[all-] inclu[sive]” (40) of these several “parts” (40).

101 Ralph Cohen, “On the Interrelations of Eighteenth-Century Literary Forms,” in New Approaches to Eighteenth-century Literature, ed. Phillip Harth (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), 38.

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Cohen and Davis are important for showing us how didactic epic was typically re-

interpreted during the first half of the eighteenth century. Alastair Fowler shows us how such re-

interpretation lies at the heart of poetic practice. He deems “the death of a genre” nothing more

conclusive than the completion of a single “coherent cycle of development,” which does not

preclude further cycles.102 He writes, “To have any artistic significance, to mean anything distinctive in a literary way, a work must modulate or vary or depart from its generic conventions, and consequently alter them for the future” (Fowler, 23). In short, once rules are known, they may be bent – and this is the means by which originality is born. “The character of genres is that they change” (18), because poets engage in the “active modulation” (20) of conventions in their works, rather than comprise a “passive membership” (20). Fowler remarks that “the verse treatise had a much closer relation to the central genres, with which it might share the advantages of verse” (12), and that, though Aristotle “so defined the genres as to seal them off” (23), presumably from corruption by “extended literature” (23), “to expect fixed forms immune to change yet permanently corresponding to literature” (23) would be mistaken.

Alexander Dalzell classes The Loves of the Plants and the parody “The Loves of the

Triangles” from the Anti-Jacobin in the “subgenre of the mock didactic.”103 I am hesitant to

place a poem and its parody in the same class, but it would be remiss not to consider them as

related (especially if Darwin’s poetry implicitly critiques as well as celebrates his influences). It

is in this context that I will consider Darwin’s use of the rhymed heroic couplet. If, as I claim, he

was challenging poetic tradition, then he chose wisely. The rhymed heroic couplet was popular

for most of the century; it was very familiar, and very difficult to misconstrue. As William Piper

102 Alastair Fowler, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 164. 103 Alexander Dalzell, The Criticism of Didactic Poetry: Essays on Lucretius, Virgil, and Ovid (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 34.

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Bowman and Ulrich Broich explain in their respective books, the rhymed heroic couplet was

versatile. It was a good choice of “medium for public discourse.”104 What was remarkable about it in that regard was its capacity for “inversion, parallelism, and “antithesis” (Piper, 13). It was, therefore, well suited to “comic epic [and] satire.”105 It does not require a big imaginative leap to

see that it was, potentially, to Darwin what dactylic hexameter was to Lucretius: namely, the best available vehicle in his language for an argument about what kind of a world in which we think

we are living.

Darwin’s poetry is both “really scientific”106 and mythological. When he began writing,

scientific and mythological/ poetic thinking were already undergoing a process of division. He

represented the two modes of thought as related, and each one as valuable. Both had the power to

reflect – and to influence – reality. His fiercest critics knew that poetry could have an impact on

public opinion. In the case of his poetry, they mistrusted his intentions; they were afraid. I

touched on Darwin’s mock-heroics briefly before, and they still have a role to play. As A. D.

Harvey tells us, “after the 1720s longer poems (with the exception of verse satires) tended to be

written in blank verse: The Seasons, The Grave, Night Thoughts, The Pleasures of the

Imagination, even Richard Glover’s epic Leonidas.”107 But “in the final quarter of the century . .

. the couplet returned to favour” (A. D. Harvey, 45), witness “The Triumphs of Temper,

Sympathy, Crabbe’s The Village, Rogers’s The Pleasures of Memory, Darwin’s The Botanical

Garden [sic], Campbell’s The Pleasures of Hope, even Wordsworth’s early An Evening Walk

104 William Bowman Piper, The Heroic Couplet (Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University Press, 1969), 13. 105 Ulrich Broich, The Eighteenth-Century Mock-Heroic Poem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 155. 106 James Venable Logan, The Poetry and Aesthetics of Erasmus Darwin (New York: Octagon, 1972), 135. 107 A. D. Harvey, English Poetry in a Changing Society, 1780-1825 (London: Allison and Busby, 1980), 45. 140

and Descriptive Sketches” (45). Such poems as Cowper’s The Task were the exception to the rule

(45). According to Harvey, Darwin’s use of the couplet was typical, and his “conscious

exploitation of recherché terms and scientific names” (59) was reminiscent of Milton’s Paradise

Lost (59). Harvey notes that Darwin faced criticism for “writing a biology text-book in rhyme”

(58), but he nonetheless became a model for “the progressive movement away from Augustan simplicity and directness” (59) – for which, of course, he has also been denigrated.

In John Arthos’ discussion of the language of natural description, he draws attention to “its fullest use.”108 The language of natural description has freest sway in poems where it is “chiefly

governed by didactic purposes” (Arthos, 16), for example, “the De Rerum Natura, the Georgics,

and the Astronomicon, Avitus’s De Origine Mundi, Pontano’s Urania, Buchanan’s [de] Sphaera,

Du Bartas’s Semaines, Tasso’s Il Mondo Creato, Fletcher’s Purple Island, Henry More’s

Psychozoia, Blackmore’s Creation, and Henry Brooke’s Universal Beauty” (16). The “early

Christian period” (73) sought to reinforce “all those aspects of ancient philosophy which affirmed divine purpose guiding all the processes of nature” (73). Arthos notes that, while there have been “times when for philosophic reasons, among others, the Lucretian influence was stronger” (75), “for the most part it is of course not safe to ascribe to Lucretius’ direct influence what was handed on by that poet to Virgil” (75). As Rivers indicates, freethinking poets too

“rarely mention either Epicurus or his Roman interpreter Lucretius.”109

In weighing and judging Arthos’ and Rivers’ shared view about the limited scope of

Lucretian influence, we need to take into account Richard Kroll’s claims in Material Word:

108 John Arthos, The Language of Natural Description in Eighteenth-Century Poetry (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1949), 16. 109 Isabel Rivers, Reason, Grace, and Sentiment: A Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England, 1660-1780, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 29. 141

Literate Culture in the Restoration and Early Eighteenth Century.110 Kroll explores neoclassical

discourse from 1640-1720, arguing that these dates bookend what he calls a neo-Epicurean

revival. Such a revival would also be a neo-Lucretian revival, insofar as Lucretius’ poem was

largely responsible for preserving Epicurus’ philosophy and bringing his legacy forward. In the

introduction to the book, Kroll supposes that the outermost date could be extended fairly

significantly: “I believe that the hermeneutic I describe persists throughout the eighteenth

century” (Kroll 8). He aligns his view on the place of ancient texts in seventeenth-century

neoclassical culture with the work of J.W. Johnson and Howard Weinbrot. In Kroll’s paraphrase

of Johnson and Weinbrot, “neoclassical culture used and mythologized . . . ancient sources for its

own modern purposes” (9). He seeks to show that that “attitude also applie[d] to experimental

natural philosophy” (9), and, more specifically, Epicureanism.

As Kroll explains in Chapter 3, “The Neo-Epicurean Revival: Method, Atomism, and the

Palpable Image,” the neo-Epicurean revival in England that he posits and explores is unique.

Eighteenth-century interest in Epicurus is typically understood to have been short-lived and not

particularly consequential. In his estimation, “the English fortunes of Epicureanism as an ethic are still represented largely by Thomas F. Mayo’s Epicurus in England, originating in 1934”

(95). Kroll regards Mayo’s work as “an unwitting parody of Whig history” (95), wherein the

neo-Epicureans were atheistic royalists, whom the Whigs “swept out of power in 1688” (95).

Kroll’s stated focus on and articulation of “Anglican hermeneutics” (21) versus Dissenting

hermeneutics is likewise worth noting. His claim that “the resort to print culture” was not a

“special” (i.e., exclusive) “tactic of Dissenters” (21) – that it served “both the language of

hegemony and of dissent” (21) – is unproblematic, and his conception of an Anglican

110 Richard Kroll, The Material Word: Literate Culture in the Restoration and Early Eighteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). 142 hermeneutics of skeptical empiricism (16) is accurate. But he appears to assume that this

Anglican hermeneutics remained constant throughout 1640-1720 and beyond (16). He also does not substantiate his conception of Dissenting hermeneutics as relatively dogmatic, and although he notes that his hermeneutic applies to Locke, he declines to consider the Deists at all. Kroll’s general description of neoclassical authors is apt: “by visibly preferring one philosophy or cultural model to another, [they] demonstrated what in their own culture they desired to replace, and how they wanted to replace it” (9). In a text that explicitly links Anglican hermeneutics and hegemony, it is also disturbing. At the very least, Kroll misses the opportunity to consider the unsavoury side of designs to change society, and what kinds of special tactics the writers whom he includes in his study may have employed and why.

Nonetheless, the possibility that Mayo may have failed to account for different kinds of neo-Epicureans is worth taking under advisement. Kroll recommends “a number of figures [who] perplex such a characterization” (95) – figures whom he classifies as “atheistic royalists” – including Lucy Hutchinson, who was the wife of a regicide (96). Kroll gives the false impression that Mayo was unaware of a) neo-Epicurean texts by anyone other than atheistic royalists and b) any neo-Epicurean texts post-1688. In fact, Mayo includes Hutchinson’s translation of De Rerum

Natura (21), and acknowledges her feelings of unease. He represents a short Epicurean revival, limited to the seventeenth century, and a longer period of decline, lasting until approximately the mid-eighteenth century. Mayo’s parameters for revival and decline almost match Kroll’s parameters for revival alone: 1650-1725. Mayo stipulates the terms in which he defines a decline

(progressive dwindling of texts with clear connections to the source material, i.e., Epicurus’ philosophy as Lucretius articulates it in De Rerum Natura) and demonstrating that such a decline occurred. In contrast, Kroll speculates that perhaps there was no decline during the eighteenth

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century. For Mayo, a neo-Epicurean author is one who subscribes to some degree in Epicurean

ethics, but a non-Epicurean such as Hutchinson can certainly pen a neo-Epicurean translation or

edition (and did). For Kroll, an author also need not be a neo-Epicurean to write a neo-Epicurean

text (on page 9, he notes that not every author he considers was an Epicurean and that he does

not mean to imply otherwise). But, because Kroll is searching for the appropriation and ultimate

absorption of an Epicurean method (primarily) and content (secondarily), for him “a neo-

Epicurean text” can denote many more texts than editions and translations of Lucretius’ poem –

and many more kinds of text than poetic ones. When Kroll mentions Mayo in Chapter 5, in

connection with the “apparent decline in Epicurean texts published in the first quarter of the

eighteenth century” (151), he is right to gloss Mayo as interpreting it as evidence of “a decline of

interest in Epicureanism” (151), and it is plausible that that was not the case, depending on one’s

estimation of what kinds of text signal continued interest. Kroll’s counter-suggestion, however,

that the decline in Epicurean texts signalled “a less intense anxiety about its [Epicureanism’s]

implications” (151) is not persuasive on its own: if there was the same level of interest and a

decreased level of anxiety, then logically publications should at least have remained constant, not

fallen. As it stands, Kroll’s proposition almost confirms a drop in interest along with a drop in anxiety. In the fuller context of his argument about “a predominantly silent absorption of neo-

Epicurean method and hermeneutic” (151), his proposition could theoretically hold true.

However, it would be difficult to expand his conception of the revival beyond 1720 if for no

other reason than this: accepting at least a stable level of interest in Epicureanism, the passage of

time brings with it new ideas and anxieties, which would (accepting his terms) also undergo absorption. To ascertain the supposedly neo-Epicurean character of a text would become impracticable quite quickly.

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In my view, Mayo’s timeline has the following advantages over that of Kroll: it is

verifiable in concrete terms; those terms are uncontroversial; and they allow for the inclusion of

a wide sample of texts, so that a variety of perspectives come to light. At that point, what, when,

by whom, and why need to be addressed. I agree with Mayo that there was a revival, followed by

a period of decline, in which there was a decrease in texts that derived from De Rerum Natura

(further consideration of Mayo’s argument occurs later in this chapter). It is also important to

recall Priestman’s identification of a second wave of editions and translations, 1796-1813.

Kroll’s account of a revival that may never have ended cannot account for the perceived need to

provide new editions and translations of De Rerum Natura beginning in the mid-1790s.

The Genre of Lucretian Didactic Epic

In this section of the chapter, I have abridged my reading on didactic epic, acknowledging

theoretical differences and disagreements as they arise. My purpose here is to foreground my

examination of Darwin’s poems in the next chapter. As Monica Gale explains, didactic epic both

was and was not a kind of epic, as we understand epic to be, when Lucretius came to it. While

“modern criticism has tended to treat epic and didactic as distinct genres, . . . this was not always

the case in the ancient world.”111 In ancient Greece, epos referred to both kinds of epic, didactic

and heroic, because both are hexametric; by convention, a shared metre marks a shared genre. 112

There was, then, “no distinction, except where didactic works [were] considered not to be poetry

at all” (Gale, Myth and Poetry in Lucretius, 102), namely, by critics beginning with Aristotle. He

wrote, “‘Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common except their metre’” (Gale, “Story of

111 Monica Gale, Myth and Poetry in Lucretius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 100. 112 Ibid., “The Story of Us: A Narratological Analysis of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura,” in Latin Epic and Didactic Poetry: Genre, Tradition, and Individuality, ed. Monica Gale (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2004), 49. 145

Us,”49) – in other words, he regarded heroic epic and Empedoclean/ didactic epic as qualitatively different kinds. Gale explains that Empedocles “does not count as a poet for

Aristotle because his work is discursive rather than narrative” (49). Arguably, that is a subjective judgment – reflecting on Aristotle’s preference for Homer over Empedocles specifically, and perhaps story over exposition generally – rather than a substantive criticism of the genre of didactic epic.

Gale describes a “historical progression from personification to allegory and allegorical exegesis” (Gale, Myth and Poetry, 19). Allegorical exegesis can also be referred to as

“allegoresis” (28). Allegorical exegesis, she suggests, probably began as a defensive “response to criticisms like those of Heraclitus of Ephesus and Xenophanes, who . . . accused the poets of impiety” (21). Moreover, the “vogue” (25) for “allegorical interpretation” (25) in poetry is possibly “partly attributable to the use of myth in philosophy, in particular by the philosophical poets Parmenides and Empedocles, which may have encouraged the view that the epic poets, too, employed myth as a vehicle to convey deeper meanings” (25). As Gale explains, while allegorical exegesis “appealed particularly to the Stoics, who were keen to prove that their doctrines were not in fact contradictory to established facts” (25), “it seems unlikely, on the other hand, that Epicurus would have had much time for allegorical exegesis” (26). Epicurus was

“overtly hostile to myth and poetry” (11), which he viewed as “inseparable” (15) entities. He condemned myth and poetry for their mutual, “dogmatic adherence to irrational explanations for physical phenomena” (14). It seems unusual, then, that De Rerum Natura involves “allegorism as conventionally practised” (27): for example, “the excursus on the cult of the Magna Mater in

2.600-60 (27). Lucretius’ allegorical exegesis of the “myth of the Earth Mother” (27) reinforces his claim that “nothing is composed only of a single kind of atom” (27) and that “the earth itself

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[is] the supreme example of a single body which must contain atoms of many different types,

since it supplies the materials for springs, volcanoes, crops and so on” (27). As Gale clarifies,

however, this is not “an approach which [met] with Lucretius’ approval” (27-28). In the same

example, Lucretius takes “the opportunity to emphasize the less pleasant aspects of the rite” (29),

“both strengthening [his] case against religion as it is now practised and representing the

‘improprieties’ of myth and ritual which allegorism attempts to explain away” (27). In “the last

explanation which [he] gives in 641-43” (27), he represents “the most repellent aspect of the

ritual . . . in terms of pietas” (27). This renders it “unexceptionable in terms of traditional Roman

morality (but not in Epicurean terms)” (27). Next, he provides “a brief, powerful and

uncompromising account of the true nature of divinity (646-51) and of the earth (652-54)” (30), which serves as a “sudden and unexpected rejection” (29) of conventional allegoresis. In

Lucretius’ allegoresis, “myth is disposed of as a serious answer to questions about the nature of the universe but can be exploited for poetic and rhetorical effect” (32). The overarching purpose is to force the reader into “direct ethical engagement” (Gale, “Didactic Epic,” 105) with myth; to force a confrontation with and dismissal of it. Gale describes the operation of De Rerum Natura on readers: they feel “directly and personally involved” (Gale, “Story of Us,” 53) in material generation and regeneration. The poem so engages them in order to reveal that material generation and regeneration are “impersonal processes” (53), which are repeating endlessly rather than unfolding over time in a progressive fashion. Whereas the progress of the universe is represented (in true Epicurean style) as infinite and basically purposeless, the progress of the reader is represented very differently. The reader is directed through the poem point-by-point – through an argument, which has a beginning, a middle, and an end. That argument works assiduously to produce the impression that experience is predictable inasmuch as it is like any

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other earthly process: it follows a pattern, which repeats over and over again (Gale, “Story of

Us,” 61). In De Rerum Natura, the lesson is that men can live happily if they live as Epicureans.

The contrast with Primer’s description of Darwin’s poetics as a “mythopoesis” is important to

note here: Darwin accords a greater degree of legitimacy to myth than does Lucretius. While

Lucretius and Darwin both “treat . . . the myths less as allegories than as symbolic answers to

questions which were once insoluble, but have now been answered” (Gale, Myth and Poetry, 32),

only Lucretius “den[ies] the very concept of divine influence in the world on which the myth

rests” (32). Darwin’s representations of the natural world build on rather than debunk old

answers.

Katharina Volk describes four key features of Empedoclean didactic epic. They are as

follows: the speaker’s didactic intent; a teacher-student constellation; poetic self-consciousness;

and linguistic representations of simultaneity between the acts of teaching and poesis (Volk, 40).

Peter Toohey describes the tradition of the genre from Lucretius onward through Latin poetry:

there are single- and multi-book formats; the former is most usual (De Rerum Natura, then, is the

exception rather than the rule).113 There are usually “a single and recognizable instruct[ive]

authorial voice” (Toohey, 2) and a “specific or general addressee” (4), and the addressee is either

named, or implied by “apostrophe” (2). Entertaining, illustrative, themes provide “leaven[ing]”

(3). The genre is “usually serious,” but “parodic forms naturally exist” (2). Didactic epic is (as

all epic is) hexametric and provides glosses of its argument, but (as Empedoclean epic is) it is

basically disseminative rather than narrative (3). As Toohey explains, the hexameter happens to have been “the most flexible metre for argument in classical verse” (3). It was, then, ideal for

113 Peter Toohey, Epic Lessons: An Introduction to Ancient Didactic Poetry (London: Routledge, 1996), 4.

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Latin didactic epic: for not only did it make an argument, but it did so within the basic framework of epic, proving that this same framework was amenable to multiple purposes.

He notes that there is no “‘pure’ or unmixed” (Toohey, 239) form to which the tradition cleaves. He describes “didactic poetry, as a type, [as having] evolved, spread into other genres, and easily lost its generic identity” after Grattius’ Cynegetica (4). Conte also discusses this seeming impurity of form. As he argues, Lucretius designed a genre whose core strength is that,

“becom[ing] contaminated with functions that do not belong to it” (Conte, 3), it “[re-] characterize[s] them” (3), and makes them figure in a new way. In other words, didactic re- characterizes any so-called contaminants. Gale refers to the “largely unquestioned assumption that Roman poets [including Virgil] worked in a mechanical and derivative way in relation to their . . . models” as “unduly prescriptive and limiting.”114 Similarly, Conte calls didactic epic “a container open to various possibilities” (“Genres and Readers,” 3).

As Gale explains, Book Three of Virgil’s Georgics is didactic with respect to agriculture, and Book Four’s epyllion represents the greatest epic as remaining to be written,115 making way for the Aeneid. Gale proposes thinking of heroic epic and didactic epic as either “two genres”

(Gale, “Story of Us,” 50), or two “sub-genres” (50) of epic as a general category. Conte proposes thinking of the “tradition of the didactic genre” (Genres and Readers, 3), because this emphasises the role of actual poetic practice in shaping genres over time, and de-emphasises the critical practice of canonisation, which can be occlusive. “The tradition of the didactic genre” best suits my purposes, because at the same time that it creates space for thinking about the ways

114 Monica Gale, “Genre, Tradition, and Individuality,” in Latin Epic and Didactic Poetry: Genre, Tradition, and Individuality, xii. 115 Virgil On the Nature of Things: The Georgics, Lucretius and the Didactic Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 49.

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in which both Lucretius and Virgil influenced eighteenth-century poetic practice, it retains the

reference to a genre or touchstone.

Problem No. 1: Lucretian Didactic Epic’s Virtual Atheism

The people responsible for the various editions, translations, and annotated copies were not

fully at ease with De Rerum Natura. Several, in their introductions, described being

uncomfortable with the material they were handling, and justified why they went ahead with the

work and made certain choices, e.g., pushing aside their misgivings and reproducing the text

faithfully, or omitting or altering content. The act of editing or translating De Rerum Natura for

an audience seems to have produced worries over reader response. Readers did sometimes

rebuke authors. Creech’s intention was to reveal Epicurean materialism’s fundamental

irrelevance to his time as an ethical system. Dryden criticised Creech’s inexact translation of

certain words and chose to omit the explicitly materialist portions of the poem in his own

translation. He focussed instead on love and death and so on,116 hoping “to make Lucretius pleasing to English readers” (19).

Hutchinson translated the poem into English at the request of a male acquaintance, the Earl

of Anglesey. In the dedication, she assures him:

I abhorre all the Atheismes and impieties in it, and translated it only out of youthfull

curiositie, to understand things I heard so much discourse of at second hand, but without

the least inclination to propagate any of the wicked pernitious doctrines in it.117

As a female translator, she represented her interest in the material as being to identify reputedly

evil doctrines and she limited herself to basic translation. She reported that she “turnd [the poem]

116 Mary Gallagher, “Dryden’s Translation of Lucretius,” HLQ 28 (1964): 19. 117 Lucy Hutchinson, Lucy Hutchinson’s Translation of Lucretius: De Rerum Natura, ed. Hugh de Quehen (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996). 23. Parenthetical citations for marginalia refer to the appropriate line numbers of De Rerum Natura. 150

into English in a roome where [her] children practizd the severall qualities they were taught with

their Tutors” (Hutchinson, 23) – in other words, as a student herself, rather than as even an

informal tutor to her own children. Although she initially “thought this booke not worthy either

of review or correction, the whole worke being one fault” (24), she felt that translating it taught

her a valuable lesson: “I found I never understood him till I learnt to abhorre him, and dread a

wanton dalliance with impious books” (260). She articulated a view in which translation might

make impious works helpful to pious readers: “to render that which in it selfe is poysonous,

many wayes usefull and medicinall” (27) is justifiable. She expected the Earl to have greater powers of rendering than she possessed (27). In her marginalia, she registered her disgust with some lines: “Horribly impious” (2.112); and she justified her omission of others: “The cause and effects of love which he makes a kind of dreame but much here was left out for a midwife to translate whose obsceane art it would better become then a nicer pen” (4.1084).

The issue with De Rerum Natura was not its representation of natural processes in terms of a philosophy. It was its virtual atheism and rhetorical power. It presented readers with a choice: being obedient to Lucretius and earning the praise he gives to Memmius, or being obedient to their faith. More importantly, it appealed to reason, offering a plausible account of the universe.

For Hutchinson, being a conscientious Christian took priority. Her reference to the poem as poisonous and her refusal to propagate its doctrines indicate her recognition of its persuasiveness. Mayo indicates that after 1725 the number of significant publications directly related to De Rerum Natura started to “ebb” (xiii) noticeably. However, Wolfgang Bernard

Fleischmann’s list of eighteenth-century imitations includes several post-1725 texts: just for example, Richard Collins’ Nature Display’d (1727), Sir Richard Blackmore’s The Creation

(1727), Wharton’s Enthusiast or the Lover of Nature (1740), and the senior George Canning’s

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translation of Cardinal Melchior de Polignac’s Anti-Lucretius (1766). All four texts were

parodies of De Rerum Natura.118 Their overarching purpose is to rebut the virtual atheism of

Epicureanism. In the previous chapter, I considered Ashley Marshall’s claim that Darwin was

writing theodicy. The parodies are a better fit, aiming to justify the ways of God to any potential atheists by using Lucretius’ genre.

David Duff, discussing Shelley’s Queen Mab, notes that there were very few philosophical

poems upon which for him to draw. Relative to “countless ‘didactic poems’ and ‘poetical

essays,’”119 there were “only a handful of works which had described themselves as

‘philosophical poems’” (Duff, 59), and, of these, “at least three could more properly be termed

‘anti-philosophical poems,’ since their manifest purpose was to attack any form of knowledge

that challenged the authority of Biblical dogma” (59). The poems to which Duff refers are the

parodies of De Rerum Natura. Duff notes that “the two new translations of Lucretius’ DRN that were published in the period [the eighteenth century]” (61), written by John Mason Good and

Thomas Busby, are not in fact called philosophical poems at all, but rather “A Didactic Poem”

(61) and “A Didascalic Poem” (61), respectively – probably because the very word

“philosophical” had “adverse political connotations” (61) at the time, which the authors wished to avoid raising. Yet, he continues, “there is an interesting example . . . of a poem to which that term was applied for the very same reason” (61): “The Loves of the Triangles,” whose “true motive” (61) in parodying The Loves of the Plants was “political not aesthetic” (62). Of course,

The Loves of the Plants had also referred to itself as a philosophical poem: its orientation was not a secret, discovered by the Anti-jacobin, and revealed to readers. In Duff’s view, Queen Mab

118 See Wolfgang Bernard Fleischmann, Lucretius and English Literature, 1680-1740 (Paris: Nizet, 1964). 119 David Duff, Romance and Revolution: Shelley and the Politics of a Genre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 59. 152

cannot “justly be termed ‘eighteenth century’” (71), because it uses these “two verse forms” (71),

blank verse and blank lyrical measure. From “the time of Dryden to Erasmus Darwin” (71),

didactic poems had typically appeared in rhyming couplets. Shelley was invoking “the polemical

manner of the 1790s” (62) and “the radical tradition of philosophical enquiry represented by

[among others] Darwin” (62) – but for him, as for Milton, blank verse was closer than any other

form to oratory (71), and thus preferable to rhyming couplets.

The parodies to which Duff refers exploit the general format of didactic epic, making a

mockery of it and promoting a religious view of nature in the process (the parodists were all

Christian, but they were not all of the same Christian faith). Whatever had happened to didactic

epic as a tradition or genre, De Rerum Natura had the potency to elicit strong reactions from

those who read it as late as the 1790s. The parodies reflect strongly negative reactions, and a

particular type of reader, the type that retaliates against material with which he or she disagrees

with a scathing riposte. I will discuss Collins’ and Canning’s parodies briefly, because they are

representative of the two ends of the continuum on which all of the parodies sit.

Collins appreciated what didactic epic could do but took issue with Lucretius’ denial of

providence, and attempted to “correct” the form by “correcting” him (i.e., by avowing that there

is a God, etc.). Collins expressed interest in making philosophy “more instructive, and more

entertaining.”120 His preference was for a philosophy “unloaded of the terms, and conveyed in

English verse” (A2 [v]). He stated that it was not his intention to “set up for a poet” (Collins, A3

[r]), but rather to put the discoveries of ancient and modern philosophers to “their proper use, the promoting of religion” (A2 [v]). The idea that poetry should support (or at least not contradict)

120 Richard Collins, Nature Display’d. A Poem (London : printed for J. Crokatt, at the Golden Key, near the Inner-Temple Gate, in Fleet-Street, 1797), Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale Document # CW112167155. ESTC # T126141. A2. References to the verses provide the page numbers. 153

religion also appears in the other parodies, and in eighteenth-century criticism of Lucretius and

of Darwin. In the parody itself, Collins approved of what, as he saw it, “Epicurus rightly

understood” (40) but Lucretius mistook: the real meaning of “pleasure” (40). Collins defined

pleasure as that which derives from being “ever temperate, ever chast” (40) and saw this as

compatible with Christianity. He criticised Lucretius and even Creech, both for effeminacy:

supposedly, Lucretius was poisoned by a love philtre from “Lucilia” (39), and Creech, by his

“eager thirst of fame” (39). Collins does not appear to have deemed either Epicureanism or didactic epic as inherently dangerous.

Canning’s Anti-Lucretius is on the other end of the continuum, as a much more thoroughgoing rebuke of Lucretius and didactic epic. Cardinal Melchior de Polignac wrote the original, and I will discuss him very briefly before returning to Canning and his translation. The

Cardinal took his education at the Jesuit College of Clermont and at the Sorbonne. He was a cleric in the court of Louis XIV; a dignitary of the Church; a French diplomat; and a friend of

Voltaire. His Anti-Lucretius of 1747 appeared in print after his death, in nine books of Latin hexameter, with over 12 000 lines in total. Book 1 attacks Epicurean ethics; Books 2 and 3,

Epicurean physics; Book 4, atomic motion in relation to human will; Book 5, the mortality of the soul, as represented in Book 3 of De Rerum Natura; Book 6 is a digression, promoting the

Cartesian view of animals as automatons; Book 7 addresses animal origins and reproduction; and

Book 8 is the last complete book, and celebrates Copernicus, Galileo, Tycho Brahe, Huygens, and Kepler.121

121 Howard Jones, “An Eighteenth-Century Refutation of Epicurean Physics: The Anti- Lucretius of Melchior de Polignac (1747),” in Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Torontoensis, eds. Alexander Dalzell, Charles Fantazzi, and Richard J. Schoeck (Binghamton, New York: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991), 394-96. 154

Likewise, for Canning, De Rerum Natura represented “the dangerous wiles of false

philosophy,”122 and, more specifically, the dangers of atheism and anarchy. He translated the

Cardinal’s Latin into English, in order to represent for a broad English readership a system in

which “religion, and virtue” (Canning, Sr., title page) hold “immorality, and atheism” at bay

(title page), and wrote of his native tongue, “I know it to be the received opinion, that the Latin

language is more comprehensive than the English; it is not mine . . . in energy of expression I

take it [English] to be at best it’s [sic] equal” (a[v]). He chose to translate the Cardinal’s parody

without making any serious changes: “I have not had such occasion for exercising a license in

this particular, as I had reason to expect, considering the place of his birth, and the high rank he

bore in a church, which has ever been the nurse of arbitrary principles” (a[r]). However, Canning

notes, “Where I have found him [the Cardinal] bear hard upon the general idea of liberty, the

universal birthright of all mankind, I confess I have not been altogether so delicate: for I thought

it incumbent on me, as a faithful translator, to make his Eminence, to the best of my ability, an

Englishman, as well in point of sentiment as of language” (a[r]). In Canning’s view, his task is to

make the original text as appropriate to his audience as possible. He therefore attempted to

resolve incongruities between Catholicism and Anglicanism, and oppression and liberty, in order

to render the original text more meaningful to an English audience. Canning expressed a desire for “Your [God’s] favourite poets’ charms” (4), as his express purpose was to oppose “the dangerous wiles of false philosophy” (6), “the fair enchantress” (6), who must be “shun[ned]” (6)

122 George Canning, [Sr.], A Translation of Anti-Lucretius. By George Canning of the Middle Temple Esq. (London: printed for the author; and sold by J. Dodsley, J. Almon, T. Davies, T. Becket, J. Williams, W. Flexney, G. Kearsly, W. Nicoll, and Richardson and Urquhart. [and 4 others in London], 1766), 6. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale Document # CW113929857. ESTC # T114590. References to the Preface use the signatures. 155 where she appears, that is, in and through Lucretian didactic. His translation of Polignac’s parodic twist on Lucretius’ epic question follows:

For what, my friend, can worlds on worlds afford

Above their Maker? Greater than their Lord?

Source of existence, all-sufficient cause,

Whose breath is life, whose words eternal laws,

Self-centred Being, on whom all depend,

Who was, and is, and shall be without end! (1)

For Polignac and Canning alike, didactic epic was unimportant as a genre, but useful as a vehicle for repudiating Lucretius’ views. Epicureanism had similarities to newer ways of thinking about the natural world, and the common goal was to underline the difference, its overt atheism. None of Lucretius’ eighteenth-century parodists were interested in anything beyond “propping up the structure of traditional theology” (Fleischmann, 134).

De Rerum Natura made translators and parodists alike extremely uncomfortable; the difference was the way in which they articulated their discomfort. The translators apologised for the act of copying or omitting what offended them, and in some instances provided a vitriolic critique. In contrast, the parodists used Lucretius’s genre against him, writing mock-didactic epic, in which they promoted a Christian view of the universe. For Lucretius, a canny reader was not only supposed to understand atheism by the end of the poem, but also to adopt it. As we will see, his words encourage readers to see things his way, mainly by disparaging the alternative as ignorance. The poem offers only one right answer. De Rerum Natura did not allow eighteenth- century readers to imagine that there was a place in its schema for their God. The poem prohibits reading any sort of divine influence into the details. To some extent, the eighteenth-century

156 parodies revived didactic epic even as they subverted it. The parodies put his poem to use in the context of present fears about the spread of atheism. They show that didactic epic’s overtly anti- religious message and material could be stripped away and replaced with something else; in this case, it was replaced with Christian polemic. It is conceivable, then, that other kinds of modifications and substitutions were possible.

De Rerum Natura’s philosophy of Epicureanism is relevant to Darwin’s poetry. Pliny called Epicurus “The Master of the Garden.” During the Restoration, Epicurus’ “‘Garden’ philosophy,” as represented via De Rerum Natura, appealed to gardeners such as Dryden, John

Evelyn, and Sir William Temple. While Epicureanism was incompatible with their Puritanism

(Mayo 65), its implications for horticulture had appeal. With The Loves of the Plants, The

Economy of Vegetation, and The Temple of Nature, Darwin does appear to have been providing a kind of garden philosophy (and, in the first two, philosophy in a garden): the loves of the plants represent an economy; that economy is foundational to nature; and nature is a temple. As well, the science that the poems promote is what yields the facts on which this vegetal economy is premised. His didactic aim was metaphorically horticultural, in the sense that he was cultivating interest and belief in the truth of his philosophy – which, like that of Epicurus, was materialistic.

The title of The Temple of Nature can be read as it is written, as referring to Nature as a temple that is presumably consecrated to a higher authority, but it can also be read as a sacralisation of nature. In my view, the ambiguity was intentional, and signalled that the garden philosophy of his poems was reflective of his Deistic Dissent. Lucretius’ virtual atheism and the rhetorical power of his genre were useful to Darwin. Rather than state that he had either an anti-religious or a religious motive, Darwin used Dissenting and Deistic rhetorical techniques, acknowledging his

157 affiliations indirectly. What Darwin was doing was anticipating (critical) charges of atheism and responding to them in a literary way.

Re- and Misdirection: Dissenting and Deistic Techniques

Darwin was a Deist and a member of the broader community of Dissent in which he had been raised and in which he remained active. As a Deist and as a Dissenter, the extent of his belief in God was suspect. If he was, in fact, an atheist, admitting it would only have damaged his chances of changing how people outside of his own circle thought about the kind of science and female education that he was promoting: science with all of the real terms that it used and all of the implications that it raised, extended to women in the same form. For Darwin, it made more sense to extend one of the guiding principles of both Deism and Dissent to his readers: the individual’s right to private judgment in accordance with his conscience.

Whether or not he was an atheist, his primary poetic goals were to promote science and female education as safe and ultimately beneficial to collective happiness. That required him to acknowledge, in some way, what his affiliations were, and to show, in some way, how they were related to his purposes. He had once before – upon being criticised by his friend Priestley for something that he had written in the Zoonomia –

evaded the charge of atheism by suggesting that the Supreme Author of all things was the

Cause of all Causes, and therefore the cause of the process of equivocal generation, but

Priestley pointed out that causes in nature had regular connections, and changes contrary

to the observed analogy of nature were miracles. Advocates of spontaneous generation

denied the existence of miracles. Changes were, to them, events without a cause –

atheism indeed. That organic particles might have powers of attraction merely pushed

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causation to another level.123

Priestley’s argument and Darwin’s polite but evasive response (reiteration of his original claim,

with a nod toward a prime mover, a Grand Architect) is a good lead-in to the rhetorical techniques of Dissenters and Deists, including both the differences and the similarities between them. Those techniques would have been useful to Darwin in signalling his loyalties, and in delineating their relationship to his promotion of science and female study.

Dissenting techniques include the following: exegesis, seduction and subversion, and candor. Exegesis involved a “spare, literally oriented version of literary criticism.”124 Seduction

involved “draw[ing] readers away from [. . . ] culturally sanctioned activities” (Behrendt, 17),

and subversion, “reveal[ing] them [i.e., those activities] as bankrupt” (17). Candor was both

something that a writer could call for or invoke, and something that a writer could perform. By referring to candor of either kind, a writer was gesturing toward a bigger principle.

The Jacobin virtue of candor, or civility and openmindedness respecting opinions with

which one disagrees, was always associated with the laws of free enquiry espoused by

religious Dissenters in philosophical and theological debate. Absolute candor, according to

this model, would provide a form of control by which wrong would naturally defer to right

in the absence of any constraint beyond reason alone.125

The general purpose of Dissenting techniques was to show that Dissent – as a non-normative

system of belief relative to Anglicanism – was defensible in certain observable ways, came down

to a difference of interpretation of the Scriptures rather than an absolute rejection of them, and

123 Robert E. Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley: A Study of his Life and Work from 1773 to 1804 (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 369. 124 Richard Helmstadter, “Chapter 8: Condescending Harmony: John Pye Smith’s Mosaic Geology,” in Wood, Science and Dissent in England, 179. 125 Daniel E. White, Early Romanticism and Religious Dissent (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2006), 95. 159

should be granted religious freedom legally and be treated with tolerance in practice as well as in

word. In short, it should be provided with the basic means for measurably free enquiry: legal

sanction and public acceptance. Depending on the text, the defence is also didactic: meant to

encourage the spread of Dissent, inclining readers to accept its claims on the grounds that they

are reasonable and observable. In other words, as with any theological text, there is some degree

of polemic at work.

More so than Dissenters, Deists were thought to be “disingenuous, lacking in candour

[meaning, here, forthrightness], and stooping to insinuate what they did not dare to publish

openly” (Rivers, 29). Their techniques, as modern criticism represents them, included the

following: “the art of theological lying” (Herrick, 65; quoting Berman), which allowed authors

“to advance socially unacceptable and dangerous views by insinuation, while avoiding

prosecution for blasphemy by hiding behind the mask of the lie” (67); “bouncing compliments”

(67), meaning, insincere “affirmations and outright lies regarding cherished Christian doctrines”

(67); “iconoclastic invention” (42), which was “a method for dismantling and discrediting

biblical narratives” (42), and the goal of which was to show a general audience that these were

fallible, and thus encourage “religious, social, and political reform” (43); “the plea for rational

liberty” (26), with representations of “the pre-eminence of reason” (27), “wit, raillery, banter,

drollery, good humour, and ridicule” (Rivers, 37); and “exaggerated respect” (37); Both Berman

and Herrick note the capacity of Deist rhetorical techniques for concealing atheism and radical

politics. I have chosen to represent Berman’s terms for analysis through Herrick’s re-articulation of them. Whereas Berman delineates the aforementioned techniques in relation to how they enabled Deists to make a persuasive proposal for social reforms without being evaluative,

Herrick’s language displays some belated alarmism over the dangerousness of Deists and their

160 supposedly unflinching aim of social destruction. That impression of alarmism is strikingly pertinent to assumptions that Darwin was a radical (a Radical Dissenter, as Coleridge’s letter to

Thelwall implied, or a radical atheist, which modern criticism tends to suppose). Rivers’ inclusion of wit, raillery, banter, drollery, and good humour, in addition to ridicule, leaves room for supposing that there could have been instances in which the denial of atheism was meant more simply to deflect attention back to the source of the conjecture about them rather than to perform a term-by-term defence of what a given author did and did not believe. That kind of apologetic defence is patently contrary to the principle of private judgement in accordance with one’s conscience.

In my view, Darwin used both Dissenting and Deist techniques in his poems, in order to modify Lucretian didactic epic’s intent. He deployed them in multiple ways. They signalled his affiliations, but they also – whether or not his textual avowals of God are sincere in the sense of reflecting his personal feelings, which we cannot know with certainty – played a role in his representation of science as related to mythological and religious views of nature, and as interpretable in these apparently vastly different lights to much the same effect. Darwin never explained or justified his personal beliefs, or the beliefs of either Dissenters or Deists generally.

Instead, the right of private judgement in accordance with one’s conscience is reflected in his poetic justification of science. His avowals of God – sincere or not – acknowledged that there were justifiable differences of opinion, and that what he was promoting was not intended as denigration.

Problem No. 2: Teaching Science To . . . ?

Poet and Anglican clergyman Richard Polwhele “became friendly with [Erasmus Darwin,

Jr.] on a coach journey from Truro to Bristol” (King-Hele, Erasmus Darwin: A Life, 210).

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Polwhele called him “an intelligent and enlightened companion” (210). Twelve years later, in

June 1792, Polwhele wrote “an appreciative sonnet” to the senior Erasmus Darwin (273). In

1798, when “Darwin’s public image was tarnished by the satires and other attacks” (323), he had

some “champions” (323). Polwhele was one of them (323). In a long footnote to The Unsex’d

Females; A Poem, Addressed to the Author of the Pursuits of Literature (1798), Richard

Polwhele defended Darwin, calling Thomas Mathias’ “animadversions on Darwin and Hayley

particularly . . . unmerited.”126 Polwhele praised Darwin’s intelligence, structure, and quality of verse:

In composing his Botanic Garden, Dr. Darwin was aware, that though imagination refuse

to enlist under the banner of science, yet science may sometimes be brought forward, not

unhappily, under the conduct of imagination: and of the latter, if I am any way a judge,

we are presented with a complete specimen in that admirable poem. With respect to the

structure of the poem, we have been told, that it wants connexion – that there is a

reciprocal revulsion between the scientific and imaginative particles, and so little affinity

even between the latter, that they cannot possibly cohere. But on this topic let us hear the

Author himself; who invites us to contemplate, in his poem, “a great variety of little

pictures connected ‘only by a slight festoon of ribbons.’” And they are pictures glowing

in the richest colours – the most beautiful, in short, that were ever delineated by the

poetic pencil. I defy any one of Dr. Darwin’s censurers, to point out a single picture,

which is not finished with touches the most exquisite – “with all the magic charms of

light and shade.” (Polwhele, 4-5)

126 Richard Polwhele, The unsex'd females; a poem, addressed to the author of The pursuits of literature. By the Rev. Richard Polewhele. To which is added, a sketch of the private and public character of P. Pindar. (New-York: Re-printed by Wm. Cobbett, 1800), 4. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale Document # CW110190523. ESTC # W008134. 162

He remarked that he had “intended to examine the style, the versification, the poetry” (5)

specifically, but opted instead to refer “my reader” (5) to open “either of the volumes” (5) at

random, read “the first description” (5) that “he” (5) saw, and “find painting sublime as Fuseli’s,

or beautiful as Emma Crewe’s” (5). Polwhele also goes on at some length about Darwin being in the difficult position of having to condescend to people who misunderstood him (5). Polwhele appears to have been sincere in his praise. That he did not level his criticism at Darwin’s poem or

intentions attests to that.

His reference to his own reader as “he,” however, turns out to be significant. Polwhele

disapproved of female readers of botany books; it seems that they were to blame if they picked

up Darwin’s poem, not Darwin himself. In a separate footnote, he explained, “botany has lately

become a fashionable amusement with the ladies. But how the study of the sexual system of

plants can accord with female modesty, I am not able to comprehend” (Polwhele, 10). He

referred his reader to his “note [extract] from Darwin’s Botanic Garden, at p. [missing]” (10).

The only such extract is from The Economy of Vegetation and has to do with an adulterous

vegetable love. Polwhele used the extract as inspiration for his own verse.

His objection was not to Darwin or to the poem but rather to “a female band despising

NATURE’S laws” (Polwhele, 7), led by a woman who had read The Botanic Garden. Somewhat

confusingly, he defined nature as “the grand basis of all laws human and divine” (7). Adding to the confusion, it seems that he accepted the Linnaean system of botany as accurately depicting nature, but female knowledge of how nature operates as corruptive of divine laws. He asserted that “the woman, who has no regard to nature, either in the decoration of her person, or the culture of her mind, will soon walk after the flesh, in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government” (7) – but it was women’s having an interest in nature that so troubled him. In his

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view, girls infused “with bliss botanic” (10) would seek after forbidden fruit. He reported having,

“several times, seen boys and girls botanizing together” (10): the unstated implication is that the

forbidden fruit was well within reach. These “botanizing girls” (11), he argued, had become

“familiarized” (11) “to such language” on equal education as appears in the writings of Mary

Wollstonecraft (11). He considered Wollstonecraft as the epitome of the “unsex’d woman” (8), whose natural passivity had been subverted by “Gallic freaks” and “Gallic faith” (8), tendencies

which she helped to spread to other women. Writing of Wollstonecraft specifically, he conceded

that “sentiments of religion may, doubtless, exist in the heart, without the external profession of

it” (38). He declared, however: “that this woman was neither a Christian, a Mahometan, or even

a Deist, is sufficiently evident from the triumphant report of Godwin . . .” (38). His concern was

that if women had the intellectual liberty (12) to study such subjects as botany – which

Wollstonecraft extended to them as unobjectionable – their thoughts would subsequently roam to

“the wreck of kingdoms” (12). Mothers were meant to teach only “the cultivation of the heart”

(46), nothing else. Female writers were to concentrate on romances and novels, and “to amuse,

rather than instruct” (48). He faulted “the public” (19) for praising the works of a “groupe of female writers” (19) – led by Wollstonecraft – “as works of learning or genius” (19) without the

“customary tribute” (19) of “panegyric” (19), in which a female writer was given a “favourable reception” (19) “in consideration of her sex” (19) rather than her gifts, and more specifically her

sex’s “inferiority . . . in the scale of intellect” (19). A female writer could consider herself as

something of a phenomenon among other women, perhaps, but the “critical forbearance was

mortifying to [her] female vanity” (19).

Polwhele may have omitted to criticise Darwin directly out of respect for their friendly

relations, and chosen to focus on Wollstonecraft and others whose impact on women he deemed

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more detrimental to society. Darwin’s fame had faded and been replaced with scorn. In contrast,

as Polwhele’s words on the subject of Wollstonecraft and her band attest, he thought that praise

was being lavished on them without good reason. It seems, however, that Polwhele was also

trying to take into account the issue of who intended what with their writings. He represented

Darwin as a poet with unusual literary aims, but literary aims nonetheless. But it is as if he was

unaware that Darwin wrote for women as well as for men. Darwin did his part to contribute to

that kind of unawareness textually. In contrast, Polwhele represents Wollstonecraft et al as

wilfully promoting the spread of liberal ideas about female education, religion, and politics.

Re- and Misdirection: Mid-eighteenth Century Erotic Satire

Polwhele’s ideas on the female study of botany were not new. They appeared in texts in a

variety of genres from mid-century onward, and only become more anxious toward its end. As

literary critic Ann B. Shteir explains, class-consciousness factored heavily in science education

for women during the eighteenth century. As botany was “a fashionable science in late

eighteenth-century England,” so it was a “part of formal and informal education,” for both

“middle-class girls and boys.”127 Botany was also “widely recommended to middle-century

women,” but “as an antidote to the world of accomplishment” (Shteir, “Botanical Dialogues,”

304), and not as an entrance into it. To be a botanist, and not simply an amateur, was a strictly

“masculine” pursuit.128 Women were barred from full participation in botanical forums, and

because they were brought up to measure themselves in terms of ideal femininity, most would

not have been inclined to ask why, let alone devise ways of circumventing the rules (e.g., by

having a man present their findings for them). In large part, their exclusion had to do with the

127 Ann B. Shteir, “Botanical Dialogues: Maria Jackson and Women’s Popular Science Writing in England,” Eighteenth-century Studies 23.3 (1990): 304. 128 Marina Benjamin, “Elbow Room: Women Writers on Science, 1790-1840,” in Science and Sensibility: Gender and Scientific Enquiry, 1780-1945 (London: Basil Blackwell, 1991), 28. 165

perception, even among some botanists, that Linnaean botany was too profoundly sexual for

them to handle, even if the terms for the parts of fructification were changed in order to ignore

the sexual metaphor at the heart of the system. Women, it was feared, could not learn even

rudimentary botany without applying what they learned of plant physiology to their own, and

assuming that they were free to be as unselective about the people with whom they coupled as

any plant appeared to be (speaking anthropomorphically, as the sexual metaphor invites one to

do).

As literary critic Sam George explains, the fear was not for the sake of the women

themselves, but for that of society at large: “In late eighteenth-century Britain, a climate rife with

anxieties over disorder and the threat of foreign invasion, botany became bound up with

concerns over sexuality, order and national identity.”129 As she explains, there were two reasons

for the alarmism. First, “Linnaean sexual metaphors could be interpreted as subversive,

undermining moral and social order” (George, 190). Second, “Mid to late eighteenth-century

Britain saw a vogue in botany books for ‘ladies’” (193), and “Linnaean texts in particular were

specifically addressed to the female sex” (193). It is more reasonable to suggest that Linnaean

texts were more commonly directed at a female readership because they were, at the time, the

seminal works on the subject of botany, and not because they were controversial. As George

acknowledges elsewhere, Linnaeus’ terms for the parts of fructification – stamen (male) and

pistil (female) – were de-sexualised by such authors as William Withering (who used “chive”

and “pointal” instead). (195) Withering’s work was still Linnaean: it was simply a diluted

version of the sexual system of botany, which was considered by many the preferred version for

female readers.

129 Sam George, “‘Not Strictly Proper for a Female Pen’: Eighteenth-Century Poetry and the Sexuality of Botany,” Comparative Critical Studies 2.2 (2005): 190. 166

George argues that Darwin’s “epic” poem promotes “an anarchic, emancipated sexuality”

(197) because it “specifically focused on the Linnaean sexual content” (197). She claims:

Darwin’s depiction of vegetable harlotry undermined the conventional justification of

social order through analogies with the laws of nature; the disciplinary role that botany

had taken on with the advent of Linnaean classification now seems to have collapsed.

The plant kingdom, it was now evident, showed practically no modesty in sexual matters

and little or no degree of discrimination regarding sexual unions. (197-98)

George’s claims rest on Darwin’s reputation within his own lifetime as a “dangerous sceptic and revolutionary” (198): she cites as prime proofs both “The Loves of the Triangles” (198) and

Polwhele’s concern over “women’s botany” (199). She does not broach the subject of Polwhele’s praise for Darwin and omission of any reference to his intention of teaching women botany through his poetry. Darwin’s representation of plant sexuality to an audience that included women is typically interpreted in the way that George interprets it: as sensualist in intent. “The

Loves of the Triangles” displays late eighteenth-century alarm over how readers might interpret

Darwin’s lessons. The Unsex’d Females displays alarm over how certain female readers of botany might corrupt the public. That Darwin went unparodied for as long as he did, and especially that Polwhele did not fault him – whether it was a courtesy, or an oversight – for aiming at a mixed audience, suggests to me that he militated against those attitudes in some way in his poetry. And, until 1797, it was enough.

Literary critic Charlotte Grant, in the anthology Flora (2003), includes botanical texts in a

“variety of different genres,” and with a “variety of approaches to the study of plants,” in order

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to reflect “the growth in interest in the subject [of botany]”130 over the course of the eighteenth

century. She terms some of the texts “erotic texts” (Grant, xi): the first two of three items in this

category are the prose Arbor Vitae and Frutex Vulvaria (both of which she attributes with

uncertainty to Stretser). As she explains, the texts “exploit an interest in describing the sexual

function of plants, thus making explicit what is already implicit in the botanical literature” (61).

The third item is a later-century text: “Like Arbor Vitae and Frutex Vulvaria, [James Perry’s]

Mimosa [1777] is an erotic text, which borrows the language of botany to comic effect” (107).

Grant warns against the “tempt[ation]” of “link[ing] the description of plants’ sexual function to the shifts in understanding of sexual difference in the period,” as “erotic texts . . . continue to employ a variety of models of difference . . . and . . . remain plural and unstable in their uses of contemporary scientific understanding” (107-108). (As we will see, Mimosa, Like Arbor Vitae and Frutex Vulvaria before it, represents woman in fitting with the Aristotelian model of sexual

difference that was generally accepted until the late 1780s.) Grant also describes the eroticism of

a fourth text: as she writes, “Darwin employs the language of human sexual relationships to

dramatise the characteristics of plants in his idiosyncratic poem about the sex lives of plants, The

Loves of the Plants” (xvi). She describes The Loves of the Plants as “the focal point for this

volume, motivating the choice of many of the other selections” (xvi). (Note: The volume

contains not only The Botanic Garden [in shortened form] but also Darwin’s prose “Key to the

Sexual System” [1787].) Grant credits Darwin with recognising “that the links he employs are

already implicit in poetic imagery; his role, then, is not to invent associations, but to provide

what he terms ‘stricter’ analogies, to move from the fortuitous to the scientific” (xvi). Grant is

concerned with Darwin’s “contribution to Linnaeus’ system” (xvii): this, she says, was “to

130 Charlotte Grant, Flora, Literature and Science 1660-1832, vol. 4 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2003), xi.

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dramatise the types Linnaeus identifies in his sexual system” (xvii). She describes his “language”

as “derived from the social and sexual relations described by Alexander Pope; thus we have

clandestine marriages, coquettes, rival lovers, tender husbands, harlots, sympathetic lovers and

monster-lovers. It is this mingling of the scientific, the sexual and the social which gives the

poem its impact” (xvii). Grant’s general description of erotic texts as “exploit[ing] interest in

describing the sexual functions of plants,” and of Darwin’s poem as making a “contribution to

Linnaeus’ system,” suggests that while both types of botanical writing “dramatise the types

Linnaeus identifies in his sexual system,” the governing rationale varies. Her reference to

Darwin’s use of Popean types (“clandestine marriages,” “coquettes,” “rival lovers,” and so on) is

helpful, because it implies that the poem exploited interest in these kinds of trope; it has,

therefore, something in common with other erotic texts of the time. Darwin’s use of Popean

types in a serious scientific work is also suggestive of involvement with the satire of erotic texts.

Several critics also use the word “erotica” to describe erotic satire. They represent it as sexy enough to attract a wide variety of readers, but also as smart enough to qualify for serious study. They regard erotica and pornography as “discrete and coherent genre[s].”131 Few regard

them as manifestly co-existent during the eighteenth century (Karen Harvey, for example). Most prefer to restrict use of the word “pornography” to the discussion of nineteenth-century texts.132

All seem to agree that erotica is “porous” (Mudge xviii), “intermixed and intertwined with other

genres” (Spedding viii), most often satiric ones (Karen Harvey 12). This provides good grounds

131 Karen Harvey, Reading Sex in the Eighteenth Century: Bodies and Gender (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 20. 132 See Bradford K. Mudge, When Flesh Becomes Word: An Anthology of Early Eighteenth- century Libertine Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vi. Patrick Spedding, The Geography and Natural History of Mid-Eighteenth-Century Erotica, vol. 3 of Eighteenth-century British Erotica (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2002), vi.

169 for considering interrelations between Darwin’s poetry and the tradition of Lucretian didactic epic, which shared those qualities and was also satiric.

As Karen Harvey explains, the critical representation of erotica has to do with eighteenth- century reading practices: for “it meant one thing to read an erotic poem with some claims to refinement, and quite another to read a pornographic novel in which people fucked” (19). The presence of satire is what gives erotica “some claims to refinement” (19): for it produces

“pleasure of a largely intellectual nature” (19), rather than permits the unrestrained spillage of ink, etc. Unlike pornography, which represented sex graphically, erotica often employed

“botanic and somatic metaphors” (Spedding, vii), concealing sex here with a leaf, there with a landscape. Its “stimulation” for so doing was “the rapidly expanding literature on sexual reproduction in plants,” “popular works of descriptive botany,” and “empiricism and colonialist expansion” (vii). Its goal was to satirise sexual misbehaviour by new means.

The subset “erotic satire” “combines botany and erotica” (Mudge, xviii). The inspiration was the same: the Linnaean sexual system of botany (Spedding, vii). The goal, however, was quite different: “to satirize the scientific enthusiasms of the day” (Mudge, xviii), through satirising romance and its female readers (Karen Harvey, 27). The satire was frequently only fully comprehensible to male readers with special knowledge – for example, of the Latin language, which is the language of botany, and in which plant names traditionally appear (57).

But there were women who knew Latin, and men who were ignorant of it. “Substantial parts of the texts remained absolutely comprehensible” (57) to any reader, because the use of Latin was limited to botanical terminology, and because key terms were translated into English (e.g., The

Tree of Life, The Flowering Shrub). Purposeful omission of the translation for a given term reinforced the notion that the so-called learned man was possessed of airs and graces. Texts came

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in a variety of printed formats, ranging from “cheaper” to “more expensive” (39), depending on

paper quality, binding method, and so on. Erotic satire was available to a broad mixed readership

– and it was highly popular (56). However tempting it might be to imagine that the men always

laughed, and the women always railed, this is unjustified: for erotic satire was neither “non-

offensive” (26), nor particularly meant to be so. While it had its requisite refinements, as satire it

never missed an opportunity for controversy. As Laura Mandell explains, “these satires gave all

readers, male and female alike, a great deal of pleasure,” a pleasure which was not purely

intellectual, but also sexual, and even “sadomasochistic.”133 For “the onlooker (reader) does not identify with any one person in the fantasy, beater (satirist) or beaten (satiric object)” (Mandell,

25). The effectiveness of an erotic satire consisted in its ability to direct the reader to a particular interpretative destination.

Unlike didactic epic, erotic satire was common and popular during the eighteenth century.

It employed botanical metaphors to represent human genitalia and sex acts, denigrated botany along with women and effeminate men, and possessed a surfeit of erotic content in respect of this aim; it was light on satire, and heavy on enjoyment. By engaging with erotic satire, Darwin would have been able to achieve a higher level of subtlety than would be possible if he had imitated Lucretius too closely. Erotic satire represented Linnaeus’ sexual system of botany as sensualist: this was the basic prevailing view which Darwin had to work on undermining if he expected the present system of education to change. As a text that superficially resembled a

“true” erotic satire (i.e., one that was opposed to botany) – as well as a mock-epic – The Loves of the Plants would have been able to reach a broader mixed audience than that which had an interest in the study of botany (vested or not), and it would have appeared as a harmless form of

133 Laura Mandell, Misogynous Economies: The Business of Literature in Eighteenth-century Britain (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 25.

171 entertainment instead of as a serious lesson; as a kind of mock-didactic. Whereas erotica conventionally satirised botanical findings (ultimately) and woman (proximally) by representing them as sources of male effeminacy, Darwin satirised the urge to over-eroticise botany, to overextend the sexual analogy between plants and people to the point that one mistakes plants for role models.

In the next chapter, I provide my close reading of Darwin’s poems, with attention to the ways in which they conform to Lucretian didactic epic, and those in which they deviate. In regard to the deviations, I consider how selected rhetorical techniques from Dissent and Deism and tropes of erotic satire enabled Darwin to adjust the genre’s purposes to his own. My claim is that Darwin could possibly have used elements of those traditions to remove, reduce, or replace

Lucretian didactic epic’s offensiveness, and pursue his own goals.

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Rumor has it that undiscovered genres were hidden among the thick vegetation and impenetrable canopy in the far north of the island. Primitive, anarchic, strange and untouched by narrative convention, they were occasionally discovered and inducted into the known BookWorld, where they started off fresh and exciting before ultimately becoming mimicked, overused, tired and then passé. BookWorld naturalists argued strongly that some genres should remain hidden in order to keep the BookWorld from homogenizing, but their voices went unheeded.134

Chapter 5

Darwin’s Didactic Epic Poetry: Close Readings

In the previous chapters, I laid the groundwork for this one. I showed that we can, and

should, consider Darwin the poet in terms of Deistic Dissent instead of focussing on whether or

not he was an unavowed atheist, and suggested that we should expect his community of belief to

have informed his poetic purpose. I showed that, whereas Darwin’s parodists link him with

eighteenth-century didactic poetry, the major criticism of Darwin’s poetry tends to link him with

heroic or mock-heroic epic, but that several texts connect Darwin with Lucretius because of their

mutual materialism. I suggested that we should consider Darwin as having taken up the genre of

Lucretian didactic epic, and also expect the tradition of eighteenth-century didactic poetry to be

relevant. I provided an explanation of Lucretian didactic epic, based on criticism of a) the pre-

existing tradition of didactic epic (of which it is part and from which it takes some of its

inspiration) and b) its accepted features as a genre of poetry, which is imitated and parodied. I

emphasised the mutability of didactic epic – as a tradition and as a genre. Looking into some

eighteenth-century responses to De Rerum Natura, including translations and mock- or anti- didactic epics, the differences between Lucretian didactic epic and eighteenth-century didactic

poetry, and criticism on the interrelations of genres, I argued that it is theoretically possible to

read Darwin’s poetry in terms of both. I discussed Lucretius’ perceived virtual atheism,

134 Jasper Fforde, One of Our Thursdays Is Missing (New York: Viking, 2011), 80. 173

suggesting that Darwin could depend on readers to expect him to share it. While demonstrating

in some way that he did not do so would have been a necessary task, it would also have been the

ideal solution to a problem that he faced anyway (and still faces to some extent): perceptions that

he was an atheist – because he was a Deist, or because he was closely involved with Dissenters,

or both – and that he was therefore not a social reformer at all, but rather a dangerous revolutionary. I discussed Lucretian didactic epic’s overt teacher-student address versus

Darwin’s much less specific teacher-student address, suggesting that for Darwin some intentional ambiguity about his intended audience of women as well as men would have been prudent, and that his poetry might also be manipulating elements of erotic satire in order to poke fun at some of the conventional notions about poetry, the science of botany, and female readers.

Both Deism and Dissent were suspected of being atheistic, or at least of commonly harbouring atheists. More than once, Darwin gave his own friends reason to doubt his belief in

God. However, his involvement in the Lunar Society, membership in Joseph Johnson’s circle of writers, and friendship with Priestley, who was a member of both groups, shows that he identified with Dissent. In his letter to Priestley about the Birmingham riots, when he condemned them as attacks on that which was not properly understood, he could as easily have been referring to Dissent as he was to science. When he recommended that Priestley continue teaching people how to think, he could as easily have been referring to Priestley’s theological texts as well as his scientific ones. For Dissenter scientists, reasonableness had a double importance.

An eighteenth-century reader might have expected Darwin’s poetry to promote virtual atheism, either because he or she had read De Rerum Natura and saw the similarity, or simply because he or she knew that Darwin was a Deistic Dissenter and supposed that that was the same

thing as, or a close approximation of, an atheist. He or she would have found common

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techniques from Deism and Dissent in Darwin’s poetry. To recognise those techniques would

initially act as a confirmation. Darwin, however, deployed the techniques in representing

differences of opinion as both possible and non-damaging, and even invited sociable debate. In

so doing, his poetry defended heterodox Christianity from comparison with atheism in a non-

overt way. Darwin was teaching his readers to think – like a Dissenter, and like a scientist.

Studying botany was thought by many to incline a woman first to atheism, and subsequently to

democracy. Whereas Lucretius identified himself as the teacher and Memmius (a man) as the

student, Darwin created ambiguity about who was doing the teaching and who was meant to be

taught. In addition, his mimicry of erotic satire distracted attention away from his mixed

audience at least superficially, and he was able to satirise bigoted and misogynistic perceptions about poetry, science, and women in the process. While Lucretius borrowed from both Hesiod and Empedocles, he significantly altered the purpose of didactic epic. Lucretius hearkened back to the precedents and created a partial synthesis of them in his own work. He was then mimicked both positively and negatively, and to varying degrees. In other words, he gave the tradition of didactic epic a basic form that could be changed according to a poet’s preferences. It was never so valued or so devalued as to seem untouchable.

This chapter provides my close reading of Darwin’s poems – as individual poems and as a set – and estimation of what, then, his poetry is. The form is loosely based upon the features of the genre of Lucretian didactic epic (these appear in boldface). There are, however, some digressions (these appear in italics as well as boldface). Each section re-introduces one of the features, looking into its textual origins in De Rerum Natura, and the extent to which Darwin retained it in each of his three poems. I discuss Darwin’s use of the rhetorical techniques of

Dissent and Deism and his mimicry of erotic satire as I go. The close readings are not

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exhaustive, or meant to be so: the purpose is to illustrate that the three poems are variations on

Lucretian didactic epic, that read in order they display a progression from less to more epic, and

that Darwin has also engaged with the written traditions of Dissent and Deism and the literary

tradition of erotic satire in order to update his chosen form.

I do not provide examples of the rhetorical techniques as they are used in theological texts:

they are easily comprehensible without such illustration, and how Darwin enlists them in defence

of his poetic subject is what is relevant for my purposes. I will, however, repeat the definitions.

For the most part, I discuss what I regard as Darwin’s satire of eroticism in the same kind of

way, but I compare specific examples of erotic satires from the mid-century with Darwin’s poems.

“Darwinian” Didactic Epic

Feature 1: The multi-book format

De Rerum Natura has a multi-book format in the sense that it contains six books of verse.

Similarly, The Loves of the Plants (1789), The Economy of Vegetation (1792), and The Temple of

Nature (1803) each contain four cantos of verse. Alternatively, The Botanic Garden is more

literally multi-book, appearing in multiple editions of only The Loves of the Plants before

appearing in full, and it totals eight cantos. The division of the verse into sections is taken as a

feature of the genre; the number of sections is not. De Rerum Natura’s books are untitled.

Likewise, The Loves of the Plants (1789, 1792) and The Economy of Vegetation (1792) – have

untitled cantos. In The Temple of Nature, however, the cantos are titled: “Production of Life,”

“Reproduction of Life,” “Progress of the Mind,” and “Of Good and Evil.” The criticism of

Lucretian didactic epic does not stipulate any of the following: that there must be six sections in

total; that they must all be present, in set order, in a single text; or that they must be untitled.

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Definition of Lucretian didactic epic as a genre takes into consideration the form of De Rerum

Natura as it came down to us, and acknowledges that other poems need not conform perfectly

with the list of features to be Lucretian didactic epics. In essence, a Lucretian didactic epic is a

didactic epic that takes De Rerum Natura rather than another poem in the tradition as its primary

model for teaching science through verse. At bottom, that is what I conceive Darwin as having

done. However, I also contend that he adapts the genre to suit his purposes, that he refines his

purposes from each poem to the next, and that he brings in features and elements of other literary

and non-literary traditions. As a result, each of his didactic epics looks – and is – somewhat

different from the last. “Darwinian” didactic epic is not a monolithic thing. It changes.

The Kinds of Books that Darwin’s Poems Invoke

Darwin’s didactic epics are multi-book in another, metaphorical, sense. On top of

incorporating scientific terms into the verses, they contain several different modes of writing,

and different kinds of pictorial representation. In all three poems, lines of verse are linked with

footnotes that deal with a wide variety of subjects: mostly scientific ones, but also literary ones

(myths, other poems, etc.). Additional such notes appear following the fourth canto. All three

poems also include some prefatory material. The Loves of the Plants has extra prefatory material

and three Interludes between cantos.

In brief (I will discuss these materials at more length elsewhere): The Loves of the Plants

(1789) 135 contains the Advertisement to the whole poem; a Preface outlining the system of

botany, and drawing attention to Darwin’s published translations of Linnaeus; a Proem,

representing the poem as a camera obscura in a botanic garden; the poem itself, with notes; and

135 See either Erasmus Darwin, The Loves of the Plants, facsimile of the 1789 edition (Oxford: Woodstock, 1991), or The Botanic Garden, facsimile of the 1791 [1792] edition of The Economy of Vegetation and the 1789 edition of The Loves of the Plants in one volume (Menston: Scolar Press, 1973). My references to the Advertisement are from the Scolar facsimile. 177 three Interludes, in which a Bookseller and a Poet discuss poetry. There are also numerous kinds of illustration, such as a (borrowed) table of the botanic classes, botanical engravings, and engravings of mythological figures (e.g. Flora). The poem proper deals with what its title indicates, the loves of the plants, i.e., vegetable reproduction in terms of the sexual metaphor.

Footnotes and additional notes are primarily but not exclusively scientific in nature.

Looking to The Botanic Garden (1792)136, and more particularly The Economy of

Vegetation, there is relatively little framing material. Only a truncated version of the original

Advertisement and an Apology precede the two poems. The Apology justifies the mythological machinery of The Economy of Vegetation. Engravings are few, and only two are botanical. The rest are of mythological figures, Wedgwood’s Portland Vase, and his “Am I Not A Man and A

Brother” medallion. The poem itself deals with the origins and reproduction of nature; vegetable loves are the foundational economy of nature. It draws heavily from mythology and

Enlightenment science, and there is a wealth of corresponding footnotes. Despite the poem’s long length and extraordinary amount of detail, readers would have been able to manage it because The Loves of the Plants had prepared them for the format and familiarised them with the science of botany; it gave them a way into science generally.

The Temple of Nature137 has almost no framing material, only a Preface. Its illustrative material is limited to engravings of mythological figures. The “Production of Life” and

“Reproduction of Life” are the subjects of the first two cantos: to this point, the poem is similar to The Economy of Vegetation. The final two cantos, however, treat of the “Progress of the

136 See Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden: The Economy of Vegetation and The Botanic Garden: The Loves of the Plants, vols. 1 and 2 of The Collected Writings of Erasmus Darwin, ed. Martin Priestman (Bristol: Thoemmes Continuum, 2004). My references are to the Thoemmes facsimiles of the two parts/ poems unless otherwise indicated. 137 See The Temple of Nature, vol. 9 of The Collected Writings of Erasmus Darwin, ed. Martin Priestman (Bristol: Thoemmes Continuum, 2004). 178

Mind” and “Of Good and Evil”: nature is the foundation. Whereas the footnotes for the first half

are predominantly mythological, those for the second half are predominantly scientific. This is

suggestive, once more, of an historical progression from mythological accounts of the universe

to scientific ones, a progression that is natural and necessary to the founding and progress of

society.

The Loves of the Plants and The Economy of Vegetation focus primarily on the non-

human, touching on the human mostly metaphorically. The Temple of Nature’s emphasis is on

mankind’s place in created nature, ability to achieve mastery over it, and responsibility to do so

if progress – defined as the pursuit of collective happiness – is to continue. A given reader’s

religious beliefs were effectively irrelevant. This poem on the origins of society brings

apparently disparate modes of thinking in line with each other. The poem is historical,

mythological, and scientific.

Darwin’s use of multiple modes creates the impression of multiple books collated into one.

While each of these seeming books serves a poetic purpose, each could also be extracted and

read. For example, a reader could skip the poetry and read the notes, or skip the notes and read

the poetry. The benefit of this divisibility of parts was that Darwin’s reader would learn some

science regardless of whether or not he or she read everything.

The Matter of Meter

Critics tend to classify The Loves of the Plants, The Economy of Vegetation, and/ or The

Temple of Nature as misfires of mock-epic or epic. In large part, the mistaken rationale behind such classification is that his meter – rhymed couplets in iambic pentameter – indicates an

attempt at mock-epic or epic. On occasion, critics mention the lighthearted tone of his heroic

couplets. The explanations for Darwin’s failure to conform to the requirements of his apparent

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genre focus on his didactic purpose. Where there needs to be either an object of satire (for mock-

epic) or a heroic narrative (for epic), there is instead the sincere promotion of science. There are

other, stronger, similarities between The Loves of the Plants and mock-epic. Darwin’s allegorical

machinery for The Loves of the Plants is reminiscent of Pope’s The Rape of the Lock in a certain respect. The depiction of plants falling in and out of love mirrors the mock-epic battles in which

Belinda and the Baron – and their respective allies, supernatural and human – compete against one another.138 There is, then, a shared incongruity of actions and actors. In a poem that

represents botany as a legitimate pursuit rather than as an object for satire, the plants-as-people

device seems misplaced, and the act of falling in love seems insufficiently important at any rate.

The allegorical machinery for The Loves of the Plants receives attention in the context of his

attitudes about women and sex, but not that of genre. The substitution – if there was one – of the

love affair for the mock-epic battle (which was itself a substitute for the epic battle) may have

served in distancing The Loves of the Plants from even the mock-epic tradition within which it

seemed to be positioning itself, making it appear much less ambitious than it really was. A mock-

epic still clearly concerns itself with the conventions of heroic epic; The Loves of the Plants lacks

any clear-cut battle. “The Loves of the Triangles” mimics Darwin’s allegorical machinery with

its mathematical version as well as his lighthearted tone, while seeking to devalue his lessons

138 See Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock, in British Literature, 1640-1789, ed. Robert DeMaria Jr. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), Canto 3, lines 25-154, and Canto 5, lines 37-137. The first battle is a game of cards (ombre); though Belinda and the sylphs prevail, coffee fumes give the Baron the courage to clip and abscond with the coveted lock of hair. The second battle is a form of combat at which the women, though ill dressed (fans, silks, whalebones), are generally competent, as the weaponry and injuries are predominantly metaphorical (eyes and frowns that kill). A well aimed pinch of snuff and the threat of a bodkin secure Belinda’s victory over the Baron. Once more, it is effectively for naught. The lock is nowhere to be found, though there is some consolation in its reported ascension to the skies. 180

along with his verses. What that suggests is that the comedic element of the poem neither

confused nor repelled the parodists at the Anti-Jacobin; they simply saw through it.

Another similarity between The Loves of the Plants and The Rape of the Lock involves

“good humour.” Pope mentions good humour in his prefatory epistle to Arabella Fermor (the

inspiration for Belinda). He writes, “It will be in vain to deny that I have some Value for this

Piece, since I Dedicate it to You. Yet You may bear me some Witness, it was intended only to

divert a few young Ladies, who have good Sense and good Humour enough, to laugh not only at

their Sex’s little unguarded Follies, but at their own” (Pope, The Rape of the Lock, 702). Pope connects good sense with good humour, and he credits a social set of a few young ladies of his acquaintance with a sufficient amount of each characteristic. The sense is not that good sense and good humour are specifically – or typically – female characteristics. Rather, it is that a woman who is possessed of good sense and good humour should be able to recognise follies (those that are peculiar to her as well as those that he attributes to the female sex) and to laugh at them (and themselves as applicable).139 In the third Interlude of The Loves of the Plants, Darwin’s Poet

prevails upon the Bookseller to prepare the audience for the next canto. He says, “I now leave it

to you to desire the ladies and gentlemen to walk in; but please to apprize them, that, like the

139 Good sense and good humour are also a key component of Clarissa’s speech on beauty in the fifth canto. There, Pope represents good sense and good humour in “feminine” terms. Clarissa’s speech is directed against the male and female folly in which external beauty rates higher than inner beauty. As she explains, beauty is “praised and honoured most” (5.9) by men “wise” (5.10) and “vain” (5.10) alike, but “frail Beauty must decay” (5.25). In her view, a woman needs, therefore, to have “good Sense” (5.16). By connotation, she must have an eye to the inevitable and form a strategy. “Virtue” (5.18) is the means to “preserve” (5.16) male attention once the initial physical attraction has faded. Presumably, the only alternative to using “well our Pow’r” (5.28) in this way is to repel male attention and “die a Maid” (5.27). Clarissa recommends staying in “good Humour still whate’er we lose” (5.29), and advises that this, too, is powerful. “Airs, and Flights, and Screams, and Scolding fail” (5.31): “Merit wins” (5.33). The best argument for uncomplaining virtue is one that Clarissa makes indirectly: “If to dance all Night, and dress all Day” (5.19) could prevent small pox or old age, they would replace conventional “Thing[s] of Use” (5.22) because they are enjoyable. 181

spectators at an unskilful exhibition in some village-barn, I hope they will make Good-humour

one of their party; and thus theirselves supply the defects of the representation” (Darwin, The

Loves of the Plants, 139). Elsewhere I consider Darwin’s use of good humour in connection

with the Deist written tradition.140 The Poet’s request that the Bookseller impart to the audience his hope that they will attend his exhibition with good humour echoes Pope’s request that

Arabella witness that he had written the original version of the poem for a selected few ladies with good humour. To a great extent, the conventional expression of modesty accounts for the echo. However, Darwin’s excessive modesty – the unnamed Poet; the poem as an unskilful exhibition, held in some unnamed village, in the venue of a barn – may have been another distancing strategy. Whereas Pope wanted female readers to be able to laugh at themselves, the unnamed Poet invited male and female readers to laugh at him. If it is unclear what the ladies of the group are to view with good humour apart from Darwin, it is also therefore unclear how their doing so might be socially unacceptable or dangerous.

It is a reasonable assumption that Darwin’s choice of meter links him with mock-epic and

epic: for example, both The Rape of the Lock and Dryden’s translation of Aeneid are in heroic couplets. It also links him with didactic epic – the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century translations of De Rerum Natura into English are in heroic couplets – and English didactic poetry – e.g., Pope’s Essay on Man. Unrhymed dactylic hexameter in the Latin language works for De Rerum Natura: its prose- or speech-like quality is well suited to philosophic argumentation. It was also the conventional meter for epic poetry classically. Lucretius’ philosophic argument uses unrhymed hexameter to discourse on the nature of things, but more fundamentally to subvert epic poetry in its own terms.

140 For further analysis of the Poet’s call for good humour, please see pp. 199-202 of the dissertation, starting at “The Teacher-Pupil Relationship.” 182

As we have seen, the English eighteenth century typically conceived of philosophy and poetry as distinct modes. This – not Darwin’s meter – determined the shape of his poems with notes. As Polwhele’s praise of Darwin indicates, he was criticised for the structure of The

Botanic Garden. What I am classifying as didactic epics in rhymed couplets are all marked, “A

Poem. With Philosophical Notes”: as I have discussed previously, they are overt, and even insistent, about their status as poems. It is within the context of the tradition of eighteenth- century didactic poetry – which includes but is not limited to mock-epic – that we can start to see his literary intentions take shape. The tone of Darwin’s rhymed couplets and his initial allegorical machinery of plants falling in love are important to consider. They signal that a kind of literary argument is being made: satire. That Darwin’s poetry could be satiric without being mock-heroic epic has gone unexamined until now.

Darwin’s parodists knew that there was such a thing as political poetry and that it could affect public perception, and they were afraid. Catholic Alexander Pope had been a political poet and could theoretically have incited unrest, but at least he was a Tory. Darwin was not simply a

Deistic Dissenter, he was also a Whig (as was conventional at the time). “The Loves of the

Triangles” takes issue with didactic poetry collectively, and it parodies Pope’s Essay along with

The Loves of the Plants. It takes advantage of Pope’s fallen fame in order to make The Loves of the Plants appear passé. But the representation of Darwin’s abuse of Pope’s maxim – from

“whatever is, is right,” to “whatever is, is wrong” – both capitalises on Pope’s past fame and presupposes that he was at least generally correct.

Darwin openly supported the American and French Revolutions, including in The

Economy of Vegetation – which almost certainly helped to inspire “The Loves of the Triangles,” and may also have factored into Coleridge’s opinion that Darwin was one of Thelwall’s atheistic

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brethren, a Radical Dissenter. In the second canto of The Economy of Vegetation, writing about

the American Revolution, Darwin signals the existence of “Tyrant-Power” (2.362). He credits

“Immortal FRANKLIN” (Darwin, Economy of Vegetation, 2.365) with having “stabb’d the

struggling Vampires, ere they flew” (2.366). He represents the spread of “the patriot-flame”

(2.367) as a positive “contagion” (2.367), the result of which was the triumphant return of

“LIBERTY” (2.370), “crown’d with laurels” (2.370). On the subject of France, he represents

“the patriot-flame” (2.385) as giving Liberty – here, “the Giant-form” (2.377) – the strength to break the “flimsy bonds” (2.386) with which “the weak hands of Confessors and Kings” (2.380) had chained him. There can be no doubt that Darwin was a political poet: there can, however, be doubt about how radical his politics were. Darwin’s positive representation of the American

Revolution – and negative representation of those who opposed it as vampires – appears as both

anti-monarchy and more fundamentally anti-English. But there are clues as to the limits of his liberality. His representation of the French Revolution justifies the republic in terms of that which it replaces: not any kind of monarchy, but rather a Catholic monarchy, and more specifically, one in which priests take priority over kings. It is in his lines on the subject of the

French Revolution that his definition of the word “liberty” starts to emerge and to reflect both his religio-political affiliations and his patriotism. One Deistic technique is the plea for rational liberty. In some contrast, Darwin’s lines on the American and French Revolutions are largely encomiastic: they praise revolutions that have already happened, and the liberty that one restored and the other achieved. There is an appeal, but it is not for a revolution in England, nor is it for the rational liberty which is specific to Dissent. Darwin’s use of, simply, “liberty” evokes the general political principle rather than either Dissent or Whig politics necessarily. It is implicitly supportive of the Protestant succession, and as such, not indicative of Radical Dissent, but

184 regular or moderate Dissent. The implicit plea is for English liberty to be in evidence: the oppressive activity of the vampires serves in showing that this is not always the case.

Darwin also used The Botanic Garden to promote the cause of abolition. In verses referring to slavery, what he wants for – and from – England more clearly reflects his Deistic

Dissent. In The Loves of the Plants, for example, the speaker refers to “Afric’s groves” (3.441).

There, “Fierce SLAVERY stalks, and slips the dogs of hell” (Darwin, Loves of the Plants,

3.442). The speaker exhorts,

YE BANDS OF SENATORS! whose suffrage sways

Britannia’s realms, whom either Ind obeys;

Who right the injured, and reward the brave,

Stretch your strong arm, for ye have power to save!

Throned in the vaulted heart, his dread resort,

Inexorable CONSCIENCE holds his court;

With still small voice the plots of Guilt alarms,

Bares his masked brow, his lifted hand disarms;

But, wrap’d in night with terrors all his own,

He speaks in thunder, when the deed is done.

Hear him, ye Senates! hear this truth sublime,

“HE, WHO ALLOWS OPPRESSION, SHARES THE CRIME.”

(3.445-56)

The exhortation emphasises power and influence, conscience, and culpability. In these lines, ostensibly “CONSCIENCE” – and not, for example, corruption – is king. The speaker addresses himself to those who have the power to bring about abolition, and he encourages them to view

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themselves in the best possible light – testing British imperialist rhetoric in the process. Rather

than representing the men as merely holding sway over the public – that is, keeping them in order – he represents them as swaying minds; making the public believe in the rectitude of their rule. The line break between “sways” and “Britannia’s realms” is significant: “whose suffrage sways” is suggestive of both an uncertain stance – potentially indecisive, potentially hypocritical

– and also doubtful footing, at least in the eyes of the speaker. Whereas, presumably, Britons are happy to oblige, others simply obey. If it is true that senators “right the injured” and “reward the brave,” and “have power to save,” a “strong arm,” and good reach (“stretch”), then they will recognise slavery as “oppression” and take action. Otherwise, they will allow wicked plots, and share in the guilt. Implicitly, the exhortation encourages Darwin’s readers, as members of the apparently swayable public, not to believe that the abuse of power and of human beings is right.

In such cases, one’s conscience, if not one’s monarch, must be heeded. Whether or not rational liberty is permitted, one must exercise it.

Theological lying involves insinuation. The exhortation is not, strictly speaking, theological in nature. But it does advance a controversial discourse on the priority of rational liberty in Britain through a relatively innocuous plea for the responsible and humane treatment of people far away and insinuate that there are systemic political problems. As Rivers writes, rational dissent “emphasise[d] toleration, liberty of thought and conscience, free inquiry, hostility to impositions of doctrine or forms of worship, the separation of church and state, and strict limits on the power of the civil magistrate in the sphere of religion.”141 The speaker’s

questionable conviction in the truth of nationalistic rhetoric might not have caused alarm if the

only purpose had been to denounce slavery. Because of the subtext on the importance of rational

141 Isabel Rivers, Reason, Grace, and Sentiment: A Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England, 1660-1780, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 165. 186 liberty, his political skepticism would have been alarming, and perhaps also the reference to slavery (e.g., there is the potential for likening limitations on rational liberty to a form of enslavement).

“Theological lying” is too extreme a description in this case: the exhortation is not consistent with either not meaning what one says, or not saying what one means. Darwin – through his speaker – promotes the importance of rational liberty indirectly, by representing one specific scenario in which it must be taken whether or not it is sanctioned. The word

“CONSCIENCE” appears in boldface, making what he is (a Deist as well as a Dissenter) and what he is doing (making a plea for rational liberty in the face of oppression by implication) plain to the naked eye. Slavery appears for its own sake, as well as acts as a vehicle for defending rational liberty. Not granting whole groups of people full legal rights because of what religion they practice and also impinging on their ability to practice it freely, not allowing Deist and Dissenter scientists to do what they do in peace, not sanctioning (let alone enabling) comprehensive education for women – as awful as all of those things were in their ways, slavery was far worse. The example is the more apt for it: if a society would take part in slavery, of what was it incapable? Darwin used a basic tenet of Protestant faith – acting in accordance with one’s conscience – to show that his country should not allow a specific form of intolerance to continue.

The lines show that whatever he did or did not believe about God, he had a conscience; the lines appeal to readers to confirm that they do, too. His use of the more general word “oppression” in the axiom implies that intolerance is a crime whatever form it takes – e.g., not allowing non-

Anglican Protestants the freedom of conscience to which they should be entitled. The persuasiveness of the exhortation depends not on British imperialist rhetoric, but on the ability of

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anybody with a conscience to recognise suffering. If faraway abuse could be made visible, then

so, too, could suffering close at hand.

In the second canto of The Economy of Vegetation, immediately following his

representation of revolutions and liberty, the speaker alerts “BRITANNIA! potent Queen of isles,/ On whom fair Art, and meek Religion smiles” (2.421-22), to “AFRIC’S coasts” (2.423), and the “murder, rapine, [and] theft” (2.424) that go on there – noting that her “craftier sons”

(2.423) “call it Trade!” (2.424). Then the speaker gestures toward “The SLAVE, in chains, on supplicating knee” (2.425). This exhortation is more plaintive than the last – it appeals more to the emotions than to either morality or reason. It is also more strongly satiric: if Britannia is potent not weak, if art is fair not unduly encomiastic, and if religion is meek not despotic, then why does such blatant oppression continue to be tolerated?

Unlike Lucretius, Darwin was not trying to subvert epic poetry. He was challenging 1790s disdain – critical and otherwise – for didactic poetry that dared to promote and participate in social reform, and especially for writers whose intentions were doubted because of their religion

(or presumed lack thereof for all intents and purposes). Darwin criticism tends to misclassify his poems in a number of genres. At the same time, his poems have resemblances to these other genres and traditions. There are – for example – resemblances to the political didactic of the

Essay and the mock-epic of The Rape of the Lock. Such resemblances are suggestive of political purposes. At the same time, invoking liberty is not necessarily the same as calling for a revolution. In the end, the implication that something other than slavery needed to change was nothing more than suggestive – it was not a demand or request. Only those already familiar with

Deist strategies and suspicious of Darwin would realise that Darwin was manipulating one in those verses and recognise the implicit connection he was making. In Darwin’s poems, rhetorical

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techniques from the written traditions of Deism and Dissent are not disseminative in function

(i.e., meant to spread sectarian beliefs, although they reflect them). They are there to help

promote tolerance for diversity, because rational liberty is necessary to the study of science as

well as the practice of one’s faith.

The poems themselves reveal that Darwin was gradually expanding his didactic epic aims.

The end is contained in the beginning, the beginning betokens the end, and the middle is Janus-

faced: Darwin started and stopped with something like Lucretian didactic epic. From poem to

poem, he refined its purposes in mind of his interests, the needs of his readers, and making

reforms appear nonthreatening and desirable. The incommensurability of what ought to be

happening (progression through generic forms without exception) and what is happening

(repeatedly reinterpreting didactic epic, reviving X, retaining Y, discarding Z) mimics historical progression. Refining didactic epic from each poem to the next also enabled him to reveal his ultimate goal gradually and provide the kinds of necessary background for it: encouraging people, in the present, to think about the ideas that they choose consciously to engender, in mind of their lives and the lives of others.

Feature 2: A Single Author, Speaker, and Teacher with Avowed Didactic Intent

In De Rerum Natura, Lucretius’s voice is, explicitly and unmistakeably, that of author,

speaker, and instructor. In contrast, Darwin does not explicitly identify himself as the speaker of

any of the poems, or of any portion thereof. He published The Loves of the Plants anonymously;

his authorship was quite well known among his circle, and the act of having his work published

anonymously was more one of modesty than caution. His authorship was subsequently

“revealed” in the full Botanic Garden, and on the title page to The Temple of Nature he is

credited as “Erasmus Darwin, M. D. F.R.S. Author of The Botanic Garden, of Zoonomia, and of

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Phytologia.” However, in all three poems, he employs multiple speakers. While the speakers

form a unity, only a few seem to “be” Darwin (or, intended to be regarded that way without any

doubt).

Lucretius – as author, speaker, and instructor – “essay[s] to fashion [verses] on the Nature

of Things,”142 and he calls on Venus as Earth Mother to help him. Lucretius claims that he

follows Epicurus “not so much desiring to be your rival,/ as for love, because I yearn to copy

you” (De Rerum Natura, 3.1-6). But he also claims, “I traverse pathless tracts of the Pierides/

never yet trodden by any foot” (1.927-28), and, “A pathless country of the Pierides I traverse,

where/ no other foot has ever trod. I love to approach/ virgin springs, and there to drink; I love to

pluck new flowers” (4.1-6).

Darwin states his instructive intent explicitly, but in not in the cantos themselves. In

the 1789 Advertisement to The Botanic Garden, he writes, anonymously:

THE general design of the following sheets is to inlist Imagination under the banner of

Science, and to lead her votaries from the looser analogies, which dress out the imagery

of poetry, to the stricter ones which form the ratiocination of philosophy [sic]. While their

particular design is to induce the ingenious to cultivate the knowledge of BOTANY, by

introducing them to the vestibule of that delightful science, and recommending to their

attention the immortal works of the celebrated Swedish Naturalist LINNEUS.

142 Lucretius, De Rerum Natura/ On the Nature of Things, The Loeb Classical Library, trans. W. H. D. Rouse, ed. Martin Ferguson Smith (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), Book 1, lines 24-25. Parenthetical citations reflect book and line numbers in truncated form (e.g., 1.24-25).

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In the first Poem, or Economy of Vegetation, the physiology of Plants is deliver’d;

and the operation of the Elements, as far as they may be supposed to affect the growth of

Vegetables. But the publication of this part is defer’d to another year, for the purpose of

repeating some experiments on vegetation, mentioned in the notes. In the second poem,

or LOVES OF THE PLANTS, which is here presented to the Reader, the Sexual System

of LINNEUS is explain’d, with the remarkable properties of particular plants.

The author has withheld this work, (excepting a few pages) many years from the

press, according to the rule of Horace, hoping to have render’d it more worthy the

acceptance of the public, — but finds at length, that he is less able, from disuse, to correct

the poetry; and, from want of leizure [sic], to amplify the notations.” (Darwin, 1789

Advertisement, Scolar, n.p.)

In the 1792 version of the Advertisement, the sentence beginning with, “But the publication of this part . . .” and the second paragraph are omitted (Darwin, 1791 [1792] Advertisement,

Thoemmes, v). Like Lucretius’ design for De Rerum Natura, Darwin’s design for The Botanic

Garden is pedagogic. Like Lucretius’s love of Epicurus, Darwin’s love of Linnaeus is sincere.

He refers, without irony, to Linnaeus’ “immortal works,” and more especially his “Sexual

System of [Botany].” Whereas Lucretius means to outdo Epicurus by convincing any lingering

superstitious readers of the value of materialism through a philosophic poem, Darwin is not

trying to outdo Linnaeus, but more simply to explain his system to beginners. In both versions of

the Advertisement, Darwin’s intent comes across as that of a scientist: to lead readers from

poetry, to philosophy. The first version, by referring his delay to “the rule of Horace” and his

“disuse,” gives the impression that he conceives of his purpose as a poetic one, and that, by

“correct,” he means in poetic terms. While the poetry must also be correct in scientific terms in

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order to facilitate the kind of movement that he envisions from it to philosophy, his concern here

is a literary one.

In the Preface to The Loves of the Plants, Darwin does not reiterate his intent: he simply

gives a lesson in the sexual system of botany. He begins with a short explanation of how

Linnaeus classifies plants: “Linneus has divided the vegetable world into 24 Classes; these

Classes into about 120 Orders; these Orders contain about 2000 Families, or Genera; and these

Families about 20, 000 Species; besides the innumerable Varieties, which the accidents of

climate or cultivation have added to these species” (Darwin, The Loves of the Plants, i).

He gives short definitions for Classes, Orders, Families, Species, and Varieties, then describes the Classes and the Orders these contain at more length. After his final description – of the Class

of Clandestine Marriage, which contains the Orders “FERNS, MOSSES, FLAGS, and

FUNGUSSES” (v), he explains how the Orders are divided into Families. Only at this point in

the Preface is it that he mentions “the following POEM” (v), indicating that “the name or number

of the Class or Order of each plant is printed in italics” (v): while his use of the passive voice to

do so is not unusual in and of itself, in the context of Lucretian didactic epic, it is strikingly

evasive. He indicates that “The Reader, who wishes to become further acquainted with this

delightful field of science, is advised to study the works of the Great Master [Linnaeus], and is

apprised that they are exactly and literally translated into English, by a Society at LICHFIELD,

in four Volumes Octavo” (v). There, too, his use of the passive is evasive: not “my” reader, or “I

advise and apprise the reader,” or necessarily “the reader of this poem” (whose author may or

may not have been involved in the translations). There is also no indication as to who the reader

is – no “he” or “she,” no “they.” He then provides short descriptions and publication details of

the translations:

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To the SYSTEM OF VEGETABLES is prefix’d a copious explanation of all the

Terms used in Botany, translated from a thesis of DR. ELMSGREEN, with the plates and

references from the Philosophia Botanica of LINNEUS.

To the FAMILIES OF PLANTS is prefix’d a Catalogue of the names of plants, and

other Botanic Terms, carefully accented, to shew their proper pronunciation; a work of

great labour, and which was much wanted, not only by beginners, but by proficients in

BOTANY.

The SYSTEM OF VEGETABLES translated from the Systema Vegetabilium, in two

Vols. is sold by LEIGH and SOTHEBY, York Street, Covent-Garden: Price 18 Shillings, in

Boards.

The FAMILIES OF PLANTS translated from the Genera Plantarum, in two Vols. by

JOHNSON, St. Paul’s Church-Yard, LONDON: Price 16 Shillings, in Boards. (v-vi)

He does not identify himself as the primary translator, or even mention the name “Darwin.” In the Proem to The Loves of the Plants, Darwin begins with the passive voice, but soon shifts into the first person:

GENTLE READER!

LO, here a CAMERA OBSCURA is presented to thy view, in which are lights and shades

dancing on a whited canvas, and magnified into apparent life! ---If thou art perfectly at

leasure for such trivial amusement, walk in, and view the wonders of my INCHANTED

GARDEN. (vii-viii)

This “I” avows having a poetic counter-precedent:

Whereas P. OVIDIUS NASO, a great Necromancer in the famous court of AUGUSTUS

CAESAR, did by poetic art transmute Men, Women, and even Gods and Goddesses, into

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Trees and Flowers; I have undertaken by similar art to restore some of them to their

original animality, after having remained prisoners so long in their respective vegetable

mansions; and have here exhibited them before thee. Which thou may’st contemplate as

diverse little pictures suspended over the chimney of a Lady’s dressing-room, connected

only by a slight festoon of ribbons. And which, though thou may’st not be acquainted

with the originals, may amuse thee by the beauty of their persons, their graceful attitudes,

or the brilliance of their dress.

FAREWELL (viii-ix)

Darwin is simultaneously using the technique of seduction and mimicking erotic satire. He is encouraging readers to engage in illicit behaviour: reading a poem as if it were a collection of romantic artworks (vignettes); imagining that this activity is taking place within a woman’s room; and imagining oneself, therefore, as participating in a romantic scene (either the woman’s room or the garden will do for that; a lewder construction also avails itself with the camera obscura). Because he has not identified who his readers are, he appears to be poking fun at male readers for looking into female poetry and botany (as in erotic satire). By linking the poem with

Ovid’s Metamorphoses, he is also linking it with anti-Lucretian satire. If Darwin’s speaker is truly taking Ovid as his guide, then his reversal is meant to mock De Rerum Natura’s materialism (anti-Lucretian) by reference to its erotic implications, and contemporary erotic satire is merely a convenient source of tropes for doing it. If, however, he means to correct Ovid, then the object of his satire shifts: the reader may think of the poem as pictures on the wall of a woman’s room, but that would reflect poorly on his mentality. Darwin’s female readers are in this way afforded some protection: if botany and love poetry belong in women’s rooms, well, so do women.

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Although the title pages of The Economy of Vegetation and The Temple of Nature identify

Darwin as their author, he avoids writing in the first person for the most part. In the Apology to

The Economy of Vegetation, the emphasis is on the potential limitations of the text rather than its

author. He supposes, “It may be proper here to apologize for many of the subsequent conjectures

on some articles of natural philosophy, as not being supported by accurate investigation or

conclusive experiments” (Darwin, Economy of Vegetation, viii). Darwin’s justification opens

with a statement on “extravagant theories . . . in those parts of philosophy, where our knowledge

is yet imperfect” (vii): these “are not without their use” (vii). As he explains, they encourage

“experiments” (vii) and “the investigation of ingenious deductions” (vii). From that point

onward, Darwin justifies his conjectures in literary terms: “The Rosicrucian doctrine of Gnomes,

Sylphs, Nymphs, and Salamanders, was thought to afford a proper machinery for a Botanic

poem; as it is probably, that they were originally the names of hieroglyphic figures representing

the elements” (vii). His claim is not that what he has done should be forgiven simply because it

is a common thing in poetry, nor is it that poetry must be excused. He writes, “Many of the

important operations of Nature were allegorized in the heathen mythology [and gives examples]”

(vii), and explains, “Allusions to those fables were therefore thought proper ornaments to a

philosophical poem, and are occasionally introduced either as represented by the poets, or preserved on the numerous gems and medallions of antiquity” (viii). In other words, because he finds those fables to have philosophical merit – to be perspicacious about the operations of nature – he has chosen to allude to them. Doing so in a philosophical poem, and through the poets as well as in other ways, he is giving credit to mythological poetry, as the place to start one’s investigations, and as a place to which one can return. At the same time, though, his

reference to Gnomes, Sylphs, etc., links him with satiric poetry, specifically mock-epic. As much

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as Darwin is defending his structure, he is purposely cultivating confusion about the sincerity of

his didacticism: does he have a garden philosophy, or is he poking fun?

In the Preface to The Temple of Nature, Darwin re-articulates, refines, and elaborates on his position – but the evasiveness regarding his identity and involvement remains. He justifies

“THE Poem, which is here offered to the Public” (Darwin, Temple of Nature, v) as a form of entertainment. It – not he – “does not pretend to instruct by deep researches of reasoning; its aim is simply to amuse by bringing distinctly to the imagination the beautiful and sublime images of the operations of Nature . . .” (v). These images, he explains, “appear in the order, as the Author believes, in which the progressive course of time presented them” (v): he is distancing his authorship from his identity and therefore his reputation, emphasising that the ordering is idiosyncratic, and distinguishing mythology from history. This is as textbook an example of theological lying as Darwin makes anywhere in his poems. He is acknowledging that what the public will be reading is what he believes rather than, necessarily, what is true – that it has to do with his beliefs after all. But the claim that the account is simply what he believes glosses over the fact that what one believes is typically what one supposes is true, and the likelihood that he is being historical. Additionally, the claim that all that he intends is to provide amusement is offset by his admission that the images will be of the operations of Nature (unqualified by the Author’s beliefs, these come across as factual), and his hope that these will impress themselves on the collective imagination distinctly (i.e., easily and clearly). He may mean to amuse, but as always he also means to give scientific instruction. Rather than fables, he is concerned with “The Deities of Egypt, and afterwards of Greece, and Rome” (v): he explains that they “were derived from men famous in those times, as in the ages of hunting, pasturage, and agriculture” (v). He acknowledges that he will be including “the histories of some of their actions recorded in the

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Scripture, or celebrated in the heathen mythology” (v). His “hopes” (vi) that there is no

“impropriety” (vi) in their forming part of “his account of those remote periods of human society” (vi) is facetious and another example of theological lying. He is giving the impression that he refers to the Scriptures exclusively for the purpose of referring to pagan deities and remote human society. At the end of the Preface, he justifies “the machinery of the following

Poem” (vi) – this time, taking advantage of his pairing of poetry and philosophy: “In the

Eleusinian mysteries the philosophy of the works of Nature, with the origin and progress of society, are believed to have been taught by allegoric scenery explained by the Hierophant to the initiated, which gave rise to the machinery of the following Poem” (vi). Darwin is still saying,

“This is a poem.” He is still giving poetry credit as philosophy. All that is different is that he is clearly pretending that it is a purely idiosyncratic account with little significance. This is the first time that he explicitly connects his writing with teaching natural philosophy and not simply a science, and that he articulates a connection between historical narrative and what he believes

(i.e., “as the author believes”): this puts him in an almost direct line with Lucretius.

Feature 3: The Pupil

Lucretius writes for Memmius, with “Memmius” possibly, but not necessarily, referring to a real male aristocrat. “Memmius” refers the male reader to how he ought to read the poem: complacently at best. Lucretius addresses Memmius at the beginnings of most verses and refers to him as having been willed by Venus “at all times to excel, endowed with all gifts” (De Rerum

Natura, 1.21-27) of comprehension and application, and equipped to limit venereal associations

(either mental or physical ones). Although Lucretius represents Memmius as a student who can speak for himself, he never allows him to do so; Memmius might as well not exist. Lucretius reinforces points by repeating the sense or substance of lines such as “now, then, since I have

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taught that” (1.265), “therefore I say again and again” (1.294), and “confess you must . . . many

another proof” (1.400). At one point, Lucretius paraphrases or pre-empts an interjection by

Memmius, using it to personal advantage as the expert authority in a subject over which he has

nearly total textual control (the writings of Epicurus not existing in complete form): “But, you

say, manifest fact shows openly . . . True: and . . . ” (1.803-10).

In the Advertisement to The Botanic Garden and the Preface and Proem to The Loves of

the Plants, we find “her [Imagination’s] votaries” (Darwin, Economy of Vegetation, v) and “the

ingenious” (ibid.); “The Reader, who wishes to become further acquainted with this delightful

field of science” (Loves of the Plants, v); and the “gentle reader!” (ibid., vii), who is invited into

a camera obscura, in which the images that appear may be like pictures in a lady’s dressing

room. In these materials, the reader’s gender is left undefined. In the Preface, they seem rather

more like lovers than scholars. In the context of poetry about the sexual system of botany – and

period-specific ridicule of that system – references to Imagination as “her” and to “her votaries”

are suggestive of a male readership and its indulgence in fantasy. More specifically, in the context of poetry that likens itself to a camera obscura and its images to the pictures found in a lady’s dressing room, the “wish” for “further acquaint[ance]” with a “delightful field of science”

is suspect. A camera obscura does not produce images that are true to life: they are inverted. It appears, then, as if “ingenious” readers are interested in a fantasy of physical intimacy rather than true knowledge of plant life. However, in the Interludes of The Loves of the Plants, references to the readership focus on their intelligence: “the candid reader” (54), “the critical reader” (92). In the third and final Interlude, the readership is revealed as “Ladies and

Gentlemen” (139). If the images are inaccurate, it is their job to know and to object.

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In The Economy of Vegetation, Darwin refers to his readers only through the reiteration of the Advertisement. In the new ordering, The Economy of Vegetation ends with The Loves of the

Plants, and the old beginning gives some levity to the new one. Whether or not readers see the satire in it or agree with it, the eroticism is what they are left with. “The Loves of the Triangles” parodies The Loves of the Plants rather than The Economy of Vegetation, and it represents the eroticism of mathematics as dubious at best. The authors do not need to touch on Darwin’s conjectures on the origin and progress of life – cooling the eroticism by analogy with math is sufficient.

In The Temple of Nature, Darwin refers to “the Public” only in the Preface, where he offers his poem as an amusement. The term is broad and gives the impression that he has now expanded his stated audience to include his detractors.

Feature 4: The Teacher-Pupil Relationship

Darwin never stipulates a teacher-pupil hierarchical relationship in his verses. The only place that he creates any sort of constellation is in the Interludes of The Loves of the Plants. In the Interludes, the Poet and the Bookseller discuss issues in poetry and to a lesser extent the

Poet’s poem (which is understood to be The Botanic Garden, as in, both The Loves of the Plants, in which the Interludes of course appear, and The Economy of Vegetation). Whereas the Poet should perhaps be the authority on the subject of his own work, when responding to questions specifically about The Botanic Garden, he demurs: “The candid reader must determine,” he says

(Darwin, Loves of the Plants, 55); “The following Canto is submitted to the candour of the critical reader, to whose opinion I shall submit in silence” (92). At the end of the third Interlude, he requests, “Mr. Bookseller, I now leave it to you to desire the Ladies and Gentlemen to walk in; but please to apprise them, that, like the spectators at an unskilful exhibition in some village-

199 barn, I hope they will make Good-humour one of their party; and thus themselves supply the defects of the representation” (139). The Poet acknowledges having readers in order to confer authority on them – and possibly to reduce some of his responsibility. They are there to judge the poem’s merits as poetry: to be “candid” and “determine” (54); to provide candour (92); to exercise “Good-humour” (139); and “theirselves [sic] supply the defects of the representation”

(139). The Poet’s repeated deferral of poetic authority to his readers – ladies among them, at least by the third Interlude – can potentially be read in terms of the Deist technique of exaggerated respect. In eighteenth-century terms, the kind of respect that the Poet gives his readers is not appropriate to what kind of readers they are – readers of erotic verses, some of them women – nor would their opinions be thought particularly literary; at most, they might be able to say if they have seen anything like Darwin’s vegetable loves in other poems. His reference to their candour and good-humour is the indication that Darwin is not as interested in what the readers whom he is teaching think of his verses as in what they think of his rational enquiry into nature in those verses.

Inviting Candour and Good-Humour

Darwin is not using the techniques of candour and good-humour in the Interludes. He is not even particularly candid about what he is doing: the conversations are about poetry rather than belief, and he speaks through a Poet and a Bookseller instead of as himself. But the words signify. He is floating concepts that are understood to be common in texts by Deists and to be politically Jacobin. He is extending the right of candour to his readers – to disagree if they must, but in mind of reason, and politely – in the literary context of judging poetic verisimilitude. In asking for their good-humour, he is emphasising that he does not wish to cause offence.

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Ovid, it turns out, is something of a scapegoat. Toward the end of the first Interlude, the

Poet discusses the art of rendering improbabilities compelling. Shakespeare, for example, “so far

captivates the spectator, as to make him unmindful of every kind of violation of Time, Place, or

Existence” (Darwin, Loves of the Plants, 54). The Bookseller asks a leading question: “I suppose

a poet of less ability would find such great machinery difficult and cumbersome to manage?” In

his response, the Poet agrees – “Just so” (54) – but does not comment on his ability. He explains

that “imaginary monsters” (54) can “disgust the spectators” (54), “yet the very improbable

monsters in Ovid’s Metamorphoses have entertained the world for many centuries” (54). The

Poet’s claim, then, is that a poet need not avoid improbability – he needs only to make the

improbable believable for the duration of the text. The Bookseller asks another leading question,

this one more pointed: “The monsters in your Botanic Garden, I hope, are of the latter kind?”

(54) – i.e., like Ovid’s, entertaining. This is where the Poet indicates that “the candid reader must

determine.” In the context of candour, what the reader has to determine is if Darwin’s

representation is believable, not if it is true. What is believable need not be believed. Ovid’s

monsters can entertain and nobody on earth actually believes them to be real. This is the extent to

which they are relevant to Darwin: poetry can be read for verisimilitude or not, and it can be

enjoyed either way. Darwin’s readers are self-determining to the extent that they identify or do

not identify with his descriptions of them (in whole or part). Increasingly, Darwin’s references

to the reader seem to connote a single, sensible, scientific- and literary-minded reader of male or

female sex – a reader who, like Memmius, is well equipped to learn, but also to judge for him- or herself. As Peter Ayres states rightly, Darwin’s poem was meant to “test whether there was an

201 audience for a serious text on botany and, possibly too, testing whether he, Darwin, was capable of delivering it.”143

Feature 5: Poetic Self-consciousness: Darwin’s Book-seller and Poet

In the Interludes of The Loves of the Plants, a Bookseller and a Poet refer to a host of authors and titles in the course of inquiring into the merits of the poem as poem. Their commentary not only shows what Darwin read, but also how he judged it, and determined his own course. He justifies his poem indirectly, without ever identifying any one text or genre to which he stuck close. The “two sovereigns of poetic land” (Darwin, Loves of the Plants, 92) are named: “HOMER and SHAKESPEAR” (92). According to the Poet, “The Great Bard [Homer]”

(89) excels at epic similes, but he succumbs to the “Horrid” (90) when he describes “the mangled carcasses of the companions of Ulysses, in the cave of Polypheme” (92). And while the Poet has credited “the plays of Shakespear” (47) with expressing “sublime sentiments . . . in prose” (47) – the example that he gives is that of injured Warwick’s response to a friend) – in “Titus

Andronicus, if that was written by Shakespear (which from its internal evidence I think very improbable,) [sic] there are many horrid and disgustful circumstances” (92). While Darwin’s distaste for the “horrid and disgustful” is important to bear in mind, it is also important to know what he excluded from the category. The Poet notes that “the very improbable monsters in

Ovid’s Metamorphoses have entertained the world for many centuries” (54); in the Proem,

Darwin’s speaker refers to Ovid’s transformation of “Men, Women, and even Gods and

Goddesses, into Trees and Flowers” (viii) as the inspiration for his “similar art” (viii). “Even

Gods and Goddesses” is no mere addendum: it is a sly way of indicating that Darwin was aware of the controversy over Linnaean botany as a form of atomism, and that he had at the very least a

143 Peter Ayre, The Aliveness of Plants: The Darwins at the Dawn of Plant Science (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2008), 30.

202 literary precedent for his vegetable loves. A set of lines from “Pope’s Abelard” (138) illustrates the ease with which personifications are made in the English language, i.e., “only by the addition of a masculine or feminine pronoun” (138): “Pale Melancholy sits, and round her throws...”

(138). In contrast, there is what the Poet describes as “a bad verse in the Windsor Forest” (48):

“And Kennet swift for silver Eels renown’d [Darwin’s emphasis]” (48). The Poet alters the line to read “And Kennett swift, where silver Graylings play [Darwin’s emphasis]” (48). He explains that “the word renown’d does not present the idea of a visible object to the mind, and is thence prosaic” (48), whereas his revision converts the line into “poetry, because the scenery is then brought before the eye” (48). For Darwin, the physical activity of play, rather than the concept of renown, makes it easier to envision the creature in question. Because Darwin substitutes “play” for “renown’d,” a two-syllable substitute for “eels” is a metrical necessity. But the cumulative action of “silver” on “graylings [my emphasis]” helps to present the scenery to the mind: the imagined fishes, more glittering than strictly “gray,” are more aesthetically striking. They are also more like the actual creature, and so have the poetic verisimilitude that Darwin enjoys. The

Poet also values the English language for its “happy property” (137) of making Linnaean botany

“as expressive and as concise, perhaps more so than the original [which was in Latin]” (137).

From those comments, it is reasonable to claim that while Darwin saw himself as importing

Linnaean botany into poetry, this was in an effort to supply poetic language with more, and more exact, terms for visible objects, not to make it more scientific per se. The Poet also mentions

“The Georgics of Virgil, Mason’s English Garden, [and] Hayley’s Epistles” (49): what he calls

“didactic pieces of poetry, which are much admired” (49). But he adds the following qualification: “Science is best delivered in Prose, as its mode of reasoning is from stricter analogies than metaphors or similes” (49). Taken in isolation, it might sound as if Darwin

203 thought of his poem as inferior to botany books, and in a certain limited sense, this is true. It was necessarily inferior as science: poetry was not designed for ratiocination. However, science was that toward which Darwin’s poem was designed to lead, not that which it was designed to do, strictly speaking.

Darwin’s distaste for the horrid and disgustful signifies here: while gross violence is objectionable, science is not. As his speaker explains in the Proem, he is staging an

“exhibit[ion]” (Darwin, Loves of the Plants, vii): if his vegetable loves are improbable and incongruous, then they can do no damage to “the originals” (vii). Lucretius is invoked early in the Bookseller’s and Poet’s conversation about the Horrid and the Tragic. The Poet having described one as “Distress accompanied with Disgust” (91), and the other as “Distress attended with Pity” (91), the Bookseller asks, “Has not this been explained by Lucretius, where he describes a shipwreck; and says, the Spectators receive pleasure from feeling themselves safe on land?” (91). In his response, the Poet distinguishes between “the contemplation of real misery”

(91) and of “scenical representations of tragedy” (91): those who witness a shipwreck may take pleasure from “the dignity and novelty of the object” (91), but “not from the distress of the sufferers” (91), whereas those who watch a good tragedy may take an additional pleasure in the knowledge that “it is not true” 92). It is in this context that the Bookseller asks the Poet about

Homer and Shakespeare – and “even yourself in your third Canto?” (92). The Poet responds,

“The following Canto is submitted to the candour of the critical reader, to whose opinion I shall submit in silence” (92). The Poet’s reticence on the subject of his own verses leaves room for imagining that there may be some horrid and disgustful scenes after all. Reference to Lucretius’ poem in the context of how “Spectators” (91) should respond to such scenes suggests that

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Darwin’s main interest in Lucretius was pedagogical, and had to do with how a teaching poem, whatever its object, should communicate to its readers about the human condition.

In the Advertisement to The Botanic Garden, he places science and poetry on a continuum: whereas “stricter [analogies] . . . form the ratiocination of philosopy [sic],” “looser analogies . . . dress out the imagery of poetry” (Darwin, Economy of Vegetation, v). His poetry is premised on that assumed relation. In the first interlude, the book-seller and poet discuss the difference “between Poetry and Prose” (Darwin, Loves of the Plants, 47), where “prose” signifies such works as “Mr. Gibbon’s history” (48). (Generally, “philosophy” and “history” are apter terms than “science” in the period.) According to the Poet, the “essential” (48). distinction hinges on their relative use of words “expressive of very abstracted ideas” (48): “whereas Prose abounds with them” (48), “Poetry admits of very few” (48), abounding instead with “words expressive of

. . . ideas belonging to vision” (48). The Bookseller presses the Poet: “Then it is not of any consequence, whether the representation correspond with nature?” (53). The Poet responds:

Not if they so much interest the reader or spectator as to induce the reverie [of “the ideal

presence of the object”]. Nature may be seen in the market-place, or at the card-table; but

we expect something more than this in the play-house or picture-room. The further the

artist recedes from nature, the greater novelty he is likely to produce; if he rises above

nature, he produces the sublime; and beauty is probably a selection and new combination

of her most agreeable parts. (53-54)

In that conception of poetry, it represents the best possible world, rather than the world as it happens to be.

In Interlude II, the conversation turns to one of poetry’s best known techniques, simile.

The Bookseller asks, “Then a simile should not very accurately resemble the subject?” (Darwin,

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Loves of the Plants, 89). The Poet’s answer is “no” – because if it did so, it would “become a

philosophical analogy, it would be ratiocination instead of poetry” (89). While it may seem as

though he is making a cut-and-dried distinction between analogy and simile, his description of

one “becom[ing]” the other attests to a certain fluidity of forms. Darwin (in the Advertisement)

places science and poetry on a continuum; the Poet does the same with their key techniques,

analogy and simile. He elaborates:

It [a simile] need only so far resemble the subject, as poetry itself ought to resemble

nature. It should have so much sublimity, beauty, or novelty, as to interest the reader; and

should be expressed in picturesque language, so as to bring the scenery before his eye;

and should lastly bear so much verisimilitude as not to awaken him by the violence of

improbability or incongruity. (89-90)

Thus, as the Poet tells it, poetry does not exist apart from what Dawkins’ calls “the real world.”

Rather, it depends upon it for making any sense at all. Erasmus Darwin’s radical idea in The

Botanic Garden is to “inlist Imagination under the banner of Science” (Darwin, Advertisement; here taken from Economy of Vegetation, v). The purpose is not to collapse the two into an

undifferentiated mess, but to shorten the gap between them. In his conception, poetry could turn

its gaze on science without being reduced to ash, and it could also be fortified. To introduce

Linnaeus’ botanical system – complete with the sexual metaphor and terms for parts of

fructification, which are either visible or presumed hidden (e.g., in the case of mushrooms) – into

poetry would make it possible to bring new scenery before the mind’s eye, and for philosophical

analogy and simile to work together in the creation of new associations that were relevant to

contemporary life.

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Feature 6: Poetic Simultaneity between Teaching and Creating a Poem

Unlike Lucretius, Darwin does not represent poetic simultaneity. Instead, he represents flux and flow between kinds of thinking, poetic/mythological, scientific, and analytical. In The

Loves of the Plants, The Economy of Vegetation, and The Temple of Nature, the verses contain words or phrases that require consultation of the footnotes. The verse brings a particular lesson within view, but the footnotes explain what that lesson is, be it a point of mythology, or science, or some speculation arising from the consideration of both.

The Loves of the Plants has time for shifting from one kind of thinking to another built into it. In the closing lines of each canto, the foregoing narrative is shown to have stopped: “Here paused the Muse, — ” (Darwin, The Loves of the Plants, 1.467); “Here paused the Goddess — ”

(2.473); “Here ceased the MUSE” (3.463); “Here ceased the Goddess” (4.491). In each case, he represents, briefly, a scene of night-time solitude: “Wood-nymphs, as the tempest lowers,/ Lead the gay Goddess to their inmost bowers . . . ”(1.469-70); “on HYGEIA’S shrine/ Obsequious

Gnomes repose the lyre divine . . . ” (2.473-74); “The Muse . . . dropp’d her tuneful shell,/

Tumultuous woes her panting bosom swell . . . ” (3.463-64); and “o’er the silent strings/

Applauding Zephyrs swept their fluttering wings” (4.491-92). The stops allow for further reflection on the preceding verses and notes. In the first three instances, they also allow for a smooth transition into the Interludes, where the Poet and Book-seller are able to discuss the poem as a poem – to ponder and debate (for the reader’s benefit) what the poem is doing.

Darwin’s Speakers: Those Responsible for Delivering the Teaching Poems

At the beginning of The Loves of the Plants, an unidentified speaker, less glib than that of the Proem, states an intention to:

tune to oaten reed

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Gay hopes, and amorous sorrows of the mead.—

From giant Oaks, that wave their branches dark,

To the dwarf Moss, that clings upon their bark,

What Beaux and Beauties crowd the gaudy groves,

And woo and win their vegetable Loves

(1.5-20)

This reads quite differently from Darwin’s aim of promoting botany. It is not suggestive of either a verse celebration of Linnaeus, or a Linnaean epic. The speaker appears, instead, to be offering a pastoral. In The Economy of Vegetation, the first speaker does not state his intention. After invoking the “BOTANIC GODDESS” (Darwin, Economy of Vegetation, 1.44) to “assume thy gentle reign” (1.45), another, unidentified, speaker reports him to be “The Genius” (1.51), who

spoke . . . as He stept along,

And bade these lawns to Peace and Truth belong;

Down the steep slopes He led with modest skill

The willing pathway, and the truant rill,

Stretch’d o’er the marshy vale yon willowy mound,

Where shines the lake amid the tufted ground,

Raised the young woodland, smooth’d the wavy green,

And gave to Beauty all the quiet scene.

(1.51-58)

Darwin does not identify the speaker in The Loves of the Plants. One may assume that the speaker is a he and speaks for the author. In The Economy of Vegetation, the first speaker is revealed as the Genius of the Place. This speaker has presumably also delivered The Loves of the

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Plants. The Genius of the Place provides a greater sense of authority over the representation than

either an unnamed author or Dr. Darwin could achieve. It is as though the spirit of the place itself

is involved in the representation of its operations as these owe to beauty. The second speaker’s

reference to the Genius’ dedication to peace and truth provides a sense of authorial discretion

over the proceedings.

The speaker of Darwin’s third poem exhorts:

By firm immutable laws

Impress’d on Nature by the GREAT FIRST CAUSE.

Say, MUSE! how rose from elemental strife

Organic forms, and kindled into life;

How Love and Sympathy with potent charm

Warm the cold heart, the lifted hand disarm;

Allure with pleasures, and alarm with pains,

And bind Society in golden chains.

Four past eventful Ages then recite,

And give the fifth, new-born of Time, to light;

The silken tissue of their joys disclose,

Swell with deep chords the murmur of their woes;

Their laws, their labours, and their loves proclaim,

And chant their virtues to the trump of Fame.

(Darwin, Temple of Nature, 1.1-14)

Darwin’s reference to “the GREAT FIRST CAUSE” can be read in terms of the Deist strategy of the bouncing compliment: it is an affirmation of a first cause of some order, but is only

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doubtfully about God. Next Darwin refers to “IMMORTAL LOVE” (1.15) as the governing

force behind the progress from “Chaos” (1.16) through “Eden’s sacred bowers” (1.33). At this

point in the poem, it is unclear if “the great first cause” and “immortal love” represent opposing

alternatives or are interchangeable. Subsequently, Darwin refers to “GOD THE FIRST CAUSE!”

(1.223) as if to assuage any doubts. However, the enlargement of the letters “G” for “God” and

“F” for “First” but not “C” for “Cause” seems suggestive. Faubert’s article on “The Golden Age” calls attention to the parody’s close mimicry of Darwin’s “liberal use of exclamation marks,”144

as well as other “poetic techniques” (470) such as his “light, celebratory tone and his use of

rhyming couplets” (470). Relative to Darwin’s use of exclamation marks, his use of

capitalisation is rather restrained. References to the first cause (as deity or as nature), concepts

(taste, etc.), and the proper names of real people and fictional characters (e.g., Linnaeus,

Proserpine) appear in capital letters. This tends to focus attention on the affected material.

Enlargement of the first letter is unusual. In Marcy J. Dinius’ article on Walker’s Appeal (1829)

– a text written by abolitionist David Walker, in which he appeals to his fellow African

Americans – she argues that “the language . . . and the visual form that this language takes combine to enable readers and auditors to internalize Walker’s voice, his argument, and his emotions with the proper inflections.”145 In so doing, Walker was

collaps[ing] the ostensible binaries of voice and print so that his pamphlet would

broadcast his message as widely as possible, converting print and literacy from means of

control into instruments for advancing the freedom and equality of the enslaved and free-

black populations of the United States. (Dinius, 57)

144 Michelle Faubert, “Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Beddoes, and ‘The Golden Age,’” European Romantic Review 22.4 (August 2011): 470. 145 Marcy J. Dinius, “‘Look!! Look!!! at This!!!!’: The Radical Typography of David Walker’s Appeal,” PMLA 126.1 (January 2011): 57. 210

It seems possible that Darwin is doing the same kind of thing for a different audience, enabling them to latch onto and think about important concepts in his most strongly argumentative poem rather than simply follow along passively and uncritically. The capitalisation draws attention to the material, and may prompt a pause for reflection. In the case of references to the first cause, it may also serve as acknowledgement of public perceptions of Darwin’s deism as a cover for atheism. As Dinius explains, a textual convention – across texts or within a single text – can become “invisible” (57) or perceptible on a merely “subconscious level” (57). But the enlargement of type size in the “G” and “F” but not the “C” is jarring. It may simply reflect the historical point at which the Christian God was deemed first cause. At the same time, though, it is suggestive of a speaking tone in which “First” receives attention, and “cause,” the credit in question, does not. The implication is that a “second” first cause has been identified. This casts doubt on the accuracy of historical determinations in general, and Christianity in particular. This is the mere suggestion on which the rest of the poem rests and which readers must consider. The question is whether or not the Christian God has been relegated to the past.

Darwin represents The Great First Cause as stamping laws on Nature: this would logically require it (whatever it is) to exist prior to the emergence of Nature, which Darwin has already represented as operating in accordance with unchanging laws. However, the invocation to the

Muse – to say how organic life emerged out of an elemental soup and was warmed by Love and

Sympathy – supports an understanding of the Great First Cause as simply those generative laws without which there would be no Nature.

Darwin’s final poem gives a (partial) account for the origins of the universe, and makes the account of a constantly regenerating universe accessible by giving it a sequential plot, by

“recit[ing] . . . four past eventful Ages,” and by “giv[ing] the fifth, new-born of Time, to light.”

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As there was room for doubt (however slim) over the identity of the speaker in The Loves of the

Plants, so there was in The Temple of Nature. The poem is not labelled as a continuation of his

earlier work, so is this speaker The Genius of the Place, or is he Darwin? Whereas in The

Economy of Vegetation, the Genius lent authority to the representation, in The Temple of Nature,

the ambiguous speaker offers Darwin some protection, and readers the opportunity to judge if

this is or is not the voice of reason.

The Botanic Muse/ Botanic Goddess

As Lucretius invokes the “Mother of Aeneas” (De Rerum Natura, 1.1-25), Darwin’s

Genius invokes “Sweet May!” (Darwin, Loves of the Plants, 2.301-20) or the “BOTANIC

MUSE” (1.31). Rather than inspiring the Genius to speak, she is one of the main disseminative

voices of The Loves of the Plants, through (as it were) quotation. Yet she is responsible for

detailing frivolous vegetable love affairs. The first she touches on is that of monogamous “tall

CANNA” (1.39), the “Cane, or Indian Reed” (n. l. 39), a “flower . . . inhabit[ed by] one male and

one female” (n. l. 39):

First the tall CANNA lifts his curled brow

Erect to heaven, and plights his nuptial vow;

The virtuous pair, in milder regions born,

Dread the rude blast of Autumn’s icy morn;

Round the chill fair he holds his crimson vest,

And clasps the timorous beauty to his breast.

(1.39-44)

Each subsequent amour is complicated by the involvement of multiple males and/or females (i.e., stamens and pistils within a single plant). Venus, as a part of Lucretius’ allegoresis, represents a

212 delusion, about both female trustworthiness, and a caring universe. Memmius will do best by learning to avoid effeminacy (read: over-association with women), and to “turn [his] thoughts in some other direction” (De Rerum Natura, 4.73-74). In The Loves of the Plants, however, the

Genius of the Place credits the Botanic Muse with leading sages such as Linnaeus to important discoveries:

BOTANIC MUSE! who in this latter age

Led by your airy hand the Swedish sage,

Bade his keen eye your secret haunts explore

On dewy dell, high wood, and winding shore;

Say on each leaf how tiny Graces dwell;

How laugh the Pleasures in a blossom’s bell;

How insect Loves arise on cobweb wings,

Aim their light shafts, and point their little stings.”

(Darwin, 1.31-38)

The Botanic Muse is supposed to have directed Linnaeus’ exploration and explanation of her once-hidden haunts, particularly plants. (Linnaeus also studied insects.) The primary poetic, pedagogic, role of her forthcoming speech is to prepare readers for the footnotes, where (first and foremost) Linnaeus’ discoveries of the internal structures of plants are explained. Hence her representation of Canna gives readers a way of imagining how “One male and one female inhabit each flower” (n.l.39), i.e., how the relation of one stamen to two pistils is like a polygamous marriage. For readers who prefer to linger in the verses at the expense of the footnotes, the

Botanic Muse has an additional role: representing, through personification of the plants, the apparent unhappiness of complicated marriages.

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She also has a lesson to give to those among Darwin’s readers who might imagine that science is a corrupting influence. Following the second Interlude, and the Poet’s and Book-

Seller’s discussion of the horrid, the third canto depicts a mock-epic battle. Darwin introduces

“two imps obscene” (Loves of the Plants, 3.15), who “rise on broad wings, and hail the baleful queen” (3.16). The imps

Their impious march to God’s high altar bend,

With feet impure the sacred steps ascend;

With wine unbless’d the holy chalice stain,

Assume the mitre, and the cope profane;

To heaven their eyes in mock devotion throw,

And to the cross with horrid mummery bow;

Adjure by mimic rites the powers above,

And plight alternate their Satanic love.

(3.31-38)

Darwin represents the effects using the example of the prune tree: “the Pythian LAURA” is surrounded by “twenty priests” (3.40), and “Contending hosts and trembling nations wait/ The firm immutable behests of Fate” (3.45), who “speaks in thunder from her golden throne/ With words unwill’d, and wisdom not her own” (3.47-50). The emphasis is not so much on the figure of “Laura” as on the influence of the imps on the priests, and the influence of the priests on her revelation. The represented result of such priest-craft is a war, in which innocent lives are lost: not a true tragedy, or even a mock-tragedy, but rather a scene of unnecessary cruelty which seems unadulterated. It is here that the Botanic Muse makes that exhortation to

Britannia’s realms, whom either Ind obeys;

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Who right the injured, and reward the brave,

[To] stretch your strong arm, for ye have power to save!

(3.446-47)

This is, perhaps, the plainest expression of the unnaturalness – and unpunished criminality – of war anywhere in Darwin’s poetry. Canto IV completes the parody of unchecked passions, by representing what happens post-war: the celebratory marriage rites of “A hundred virgins [and] a hundred swains” (4.471). During the “trains” (4.472), “Cupids fling/Promiscuous arrows”

(4.479-80), and the betrothed plants let “soft Whispers fly” (4.481) or make “sly Glance[s]”

(4.482), before “seal[ing] with muttering lips the faithless vow” (4.484), in front of their priestess, “Licentious Hymen” (4.485). The line, “the Loves laugh at all but Nature’s laws”

(4.490), is not a positive affirmation of infidelity. It is, rather, a condemnation of frivolity in the face of real strife. The Loves of the Plants ostensibly offers up nothing more than a “trivial amusement.” Yet this amusement, “[the] Inchanted Garden,” is necessary to the development of

Darwin’s poetry as a progressive whole; it is here that the illusion of a happy pleasure garden, where loss of life is allayed through unthinking marital unions (and potentially monstrous births), is revealed as such, here that wonder becomes permissible, and here that it becomes re- inscribable.

In The Economy of Vegetation, the Genius calls on the Botanic Muse again. This time, he refers to her as “the Goddess of Botany” (Darwin, Economy of Vegetation, xi) and “Botanic

Goddess” (1.44). The change of name helps to reinforce the idea that nature inspires botany, rather than botany inspiring an unnatural way of thinking. He calls her,

THOU! whose mind the well-attemper’d ray

Of Taste and Virtue lights with purer day;

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Whose finer sense each soft vibration owns

With sweet responsive sympathy of tones;

So the fair flower expands it’s [sic] lucid form

To meet the sun, and shuts it to the storm.

(1.9-14)

He avows that he owes his operations to her:

For thee my borders nurse the fragrant wreath,

My fountains murmur, and my zephyrs breathe;

Slow slides the painted snail, the gilded fly

Smooths his fine down, to charm thy curious eye;

On twinkling fins my pearly nations play,

Or win with sinuous train their trackless way;

My plumy pairs in gay embroidery dress’d

Form with ingenious bill the pensile nest,

To Love’s sweet notes attune the listening dell,

And Echo sounds her soft symphonious shell.

(1.9-24)

He bids her, therefore, to “bend [her] radiant eyes;/ O’er these soft scenes assume [her] gentle reign,/ Pomona, Ceres, Flora in [her] train” (1.44-46) – that is, to continue to exert her influence over the “soft,” fertile landscape that serves as the scenery for the poem. He also exhorts her to provide consolation to any “hapless Maid” who “with Thee . . . should stray,/ Disasterous [sic]

Love companion of her way” (1.25-26); this acts as a reminder of what is to come in (what is now) Part II, and frames its (re-) interpretation, not as a wholly pleasant and diverting romance,

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but also as a record of disastrous couplings, the imitation of which maids can avoid. The footnote

for line 13 (on “the fair flower”) draws attention to Lucretius via reference to “the philosophy of

Epicurus”: “It seems to have been the original design of the philosophy of Epicurus to render the

mind exquisitely sensible to agreeable sensations, and equally insensible to disagreeable ones”

(2). Whereas Lucretius means to discover “the first-beginnings of things” in defiance of

superstition, Darwin’s references to Lucretius (with respect to the horrid) and Epicurus (also with

respect to issues of sensibility) suggest his interest in guiding readers to look on Linnaean botany

as a clarification of what is known rather than as effrontery.

As in The Loves of the Plants, the Goddess’ speech is sanctioned by the Genius of the

Place, and also Darwin. Her exposition involves the material basis of “the living world” (Darwin,

Economy of Vegetation 1.102), that is, the reproductive operations of “LOVE DIVINE” (1.101)

– another bouncing compliment, without rigid reference. Also as in The Loves of the Plants, the verses lead into the footnotes. In the note on “LOVE DIVINE,” Darwin (about whose authorship there is no longer the slightest doubt) discusses the “very antient [sic] and sublime allegory of

Eros, or Divine Love, producing the world from the Egg of Night, as it floated in Chaos” (n.

1.101). He supposes that mythology is in fact philosophy – a less advanced form of it, but nonetheless based in observation:

From having observed the gradual evolution of the young animal or plant from its egg or

seed; and afterwards its successive advances to its more perfect state, or maturity;

philosophers of all ages seem to have imagined, that the great world itself had likewise its

infancy and its gradual progress to maturity; this seems to have given origin to the very

antient and sublime allegory of Eros, or Divine Love, producing the world from the Egg

of Night, as it floated in Chaos. (n. 1.101)

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Darwin himself imagines a process of evolution, prior to his grandson’s theory of evolution by

natural selection: “Perhaps all the supposed monstrous births of Nature are remains of their

habits of production in their former less perfect state, or attempts towards greater perfection” (n.

1.101). As Peter Ayre writes, Darwin’s views of the gradual development of life and knowledge

are similar: “Erasmus was keenly aware that the state of human knowledge was not fixed or

finite, that it was continuously growing and edging forwards” (30). That awareness distinguishes

him from Lucretius as well as from strict adherents to revelation.

The Goddess’ exposition involves Scripture. She uses it to exert control over pagan

mythology – ostensibly to keep Christian belief foremost in readers’ minds as the proper

account. Darwin, however, is using her words to create an implicit association of pagan myths with Christian theology. The Goddess of Nature paraphrases,

—LET THERE BE LIGHT! Proclaim’d the ALMIGHTY LORD,

Astonish’d Chaos heard the potent word;—

Through all his realms the kindling Ether runs,

And the mass starts into a million suns

(Darwin, Economy of Vegetation, 1.103-05)

In the corresponding note, Darwin limits his conjecture to a “natural power, which could project a Sun out of Chaos” (n. 1.105), and for which there was (and is) “no idea” (n. 1.105): “we are yet ignorant” (n. 1.105). In so limiting himself to the discussion of a natural power rather than God, he is nonetheless generating doubt that he believes in one. If there were such a natural power, would God be needed? That is the kind of question that his bouncing compliments followed by conjectures would raise. However, while his imagining originally imperfect (and developable) forms did not mesh with Christian belief, nowhere does he conjecture that the results of

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philosophic inquiry might disprove design, or give the impression that this is what he hopes will

come to pass. He may look insincere, but his emphasis on observation and the limited scope of his conjectures are proper to him both as a skeptical deist and a friend to Dissent.

Subsequent cantos detail (with reference to myths) observed natural phenomena and many resultant technological advances. Canto II deals with terrestrial matters; Canto III, with aquatic matters; and Canto IV, with aerial matters, with especial respect to plants. The tone is generally celebratory: from a “gaping shell refulgent sprung/ IMMORTAL LOVE, his bow celestial strung” (Darwin, Economy of Vegetation, 1.415-16) and provided “the ever-living flame” (1.420) by light of which both the progress of life forms and of technological advancement can be observed. In Canto II, The Goddess recounts Elijah’s pledge to the “MIGHTY LORD” (1.567) to

“thy erring flock recal” (1.573). References to “proud Idolatry” (1.565) and the attendant risk of a “desert earth” (1.566) seem to suggest the God-given responsibility to work the earth. By implication, scientifically-aided industry fulfills that obligation. Not only does it make the fuller use of resources possible, it also encourages “shouting nations [to] own THE LIVING GOD”

(1.584), and “conscious Nature [to] own the present God” (2.264), meaning, “God” as

(apparently) revealed rather than as cloaked in mystery. Darwin’s multiplicity of references to

God (God, First Cause, the Mighty Lord, the Living God, God The Great First Cause) are potentially readable as bouncing compliments, that is, disingenuous affirmations. However, these references are part of the exegesis of the lines preceding them. In the poems, exegesis merges different kinds of accounts – mythological, theological, scientific – coherently. The exegetical strategy is not to convert readers. Rather, it is to suggest that the there is room within (for example) the phrase “The Great First Cause” for multiple interpretations. There is no textual imperative to choose between God and nature.

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The Botanic Goddess explains how “NYMPHS” (Darwin, Economy of Vegetation, 1.209)

“taught” (1.213) “uncultur’d man” (1.209) “the first Art” (1.213), “FIRE” (1.212); in his

footnote, Darwin attributes to the discovery of fire, and the related discovery of how to forge

steel tools, mankind’s ability “to cope with the vegetable world” (n. 1.212), etc. She identifies

phenomena in terms of who discovered them: “BOLOGNA’S chalks with faint ignition blaze,/

BECCARI’S shells emit prismatic rays” (1.181-82). But she implies that owing to scientific

discoveries it may someday be possible to “feast without blood! And nourish human-kind”

1.278), i.e., that scientific discoveries are beneficial to mankind generally. In his footnote,

Darwin gestures towards “the benevolence of the great Author of all things” (n. 1.278) as

“manifest in the sum of his works” (n. 1.278) and not the parts. Darwin deems nourishment “by

the destruction of other living animals” (n. 1.278) – for example, “as lions prey upon lambs” (n.

1.278) – a “less perfect part of the economy of nature” (n. 1.278). The Goddess then represents

coining by machine, in which “the Harp, the Lily, and the Lion join,/ And George and Britain

guard the sterling coin” (1.287-88). Darwin refers to the machine, constructed by “Mr. Boulton

. . . lately . . . at Soho near Birmingham” (n.1.281), as preventing forgery, and thereby saving

would-be criminals from execution. He considers this “a circumstance worthy the attention of a

great minister. If a civic crown was given in Rome for preserving the life of one citizen, Mr.

Boulton should be covered with garlands of oak!” (n. 1.281). In other words, for Darwin, a

British Lion is characterised by its ability to protect rather than prey on the weak, and science

potentially increases that ability.

The Goddess refers next to “UNCONQUER’D STEAM!” (Darwin, Economy of

Vegetation, 1.289), which she represents as Herculean in its ability to aid mankind:

Soon shall thy arm, UNCONQUER’D STEAM! afar

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Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car;

Or on wide-waving wings expanded bear

The flying-chariot through the fields of air

— Fair crews triumphant, leaning from above,

Shall wave their fluttering kerchiefs as they move;

Or warrior-bands alarm the gaping crowd,

And armies shrink beneath the shadowy crowd.

“So mighty HERCULES o’er many a clime

Waved his vast mace in Virtue’s cause sublime,

Unmeasured strength with early art combined,

Awed, served, protected, and amazed mankind.”

(1.289-300)

Whereas Hercules’ strength is “unmeasured” – it cannot but be so – his “early art” has been outdone. Armed with steam-power, men have a realistic chance to be heroic. In The Loves of the

Plants, the Genius credits the Muse with leading Linnaeus to discoveries. Similarly, in The

Economy of Vegetation, the Goddess credits her nymphs with leading assorted sages to the knowledge that they sought: “You led your FRANKLIN to your glazed retreats” (1.383). She also, however, credits the sages themselves with a form of godliness or saintliness: “O’er the young Sage your mystic mantle spread,/ and wreathed the crown electric round his head” (1.387-

88). If The Loves of the Plants is aimed at readers learning science for the sake of improving their minds, The Economy of Vegetation is aimed at their learning it for the sake of advancing mutual security.

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Darwin’s reference to Epicureanism’s interest in managing agreeable and disagreeable sensations takes on an ethical dimension in the Goddess’ speech on Wedgwood’s artworks. As she explains, creative representations may inspire “delight” (Darwin, Economy of Vegetation,

2.314), or they may “call the pearly drops from Pity’s eye,/ Or stay Despair’s disanimating sigh”

(2.311-12). The Goddess praises Wedgwood: “O Friend of Art” (2.313, 2.341). As she puts it, his artworks are “rich with new taste, with ancient virtue bold” (2.314). One cameo cultivates sympathy for “the poor fetter’d SLAVE on bended knee/ From Britain’s sons imploring to be free” (2.315-16). Another suggests, “with fair HOPE the brightening scenes improve,/ And cheer the dreary wastes at Sydney-Cove” (2.217-18). And, on “PORTLAND’S mystic urn” (2.320),

“sits HUMANKIND in hieroglyphic state,/ Serious, and pondering on their changeful state”

(2.323-24). The impression is that the visual impact of creative representations is as great as (if not greater than) that of natural phenomena, because they offer insights into the human condition, which, more often than not, is not to know, but to wonder. The Portland Vase’s images, as brought to the mind’s eye by Darwin’s verse, represent the finitude of “MORTAL

LIFE” (2.326), the “smiles assuasive [of] LOVE DIVINE” (2.329), the “support” of

“IMMORTAL LIFE” (2.331), and, above all, “the many-colour’d veil of Truth” (2.338). The

Goddess addresses Wedgwood:

Whether, O Friend of Art! Your gems derive

Fine forms from Greece, and fabled Gods revive;

Or bid from modern life the Portrait breathe,

And bind round Honour’s brow the laurel wreath;

Buoyant shall sail, with Fame’s historic page,

Each fair medallion o’er the wrecks of age;

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Nor Time shall mar; nor steel, nor fire, nor rust

Touch the hard polish of the immortal bust.

(2.341-48)

The implication is that mythology cannot and should not be consigned to the dark past of the history of ideas. Mythology is not monolithic: rather than merely surviving “the wrecks of age” and being made to reflect on modern life, it can benefit from technological advances. In the case of the images on the Portland Vase, Wedgwood’s hard polish is more durable than anything the ancients had at their disposal (and, as the note attests, the manufactory offers a greater variety of colours and finishes). In contrast to the pleasing image of reflective humankind, the canto cultivates antipathy for “Tyrant-Power” (2.362) and for “AVARICE, shrouded in Religion’s robe” (2.415) and sympathy for the reclaiming of “LIBERTY” (2.370) by the Americans, Irish, and French.

Canto IV opens with the Goddess’ address to the sylphs, who attend Nature’s “myriad births” (Darwin, Economy of Vegetation, 4.42), by which “the subtile flame” (4.46) “renews”

(4.46). The emphasis of the final canto is on “plastic Nature” (4.59), which opposes “Oblivion”

(4.59) by “repeopl[ing] all her realms” (4.60) – from “green children of parturient Spring”

(4.352), to increasingly complex forms of life – and is reliant on air. In the note for “repeoples all her realms,” Darwin quotes from De Rerum Natura: “Quae mare navigerum et terres frugiferentes/ Concelabras; per te quoniam genus omne animantum/ Concipitur, visitque exortum lumina folis” (n. 4.60). Rouse translates those lines are as follows: “who beneath the smooth-/ moving heavenly signs fill with yourself the sea full-/ laden with ships, the earth that bears the crops,/ since through you every kind of living thing is con-/ ceived and rising up looks on the light of the sun” (De Rerum Natura, 1.2-6). The “who” is “Mother of Aeneas and his race,

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darling of men and/ gods, nurturing Venus” (1.1-2). Darwin’s use of the material from De Rerum

Natura in his note underlines the fundamental importance of sexual regeneration.

As Brian Dolan explains, dissenting doctors, including Darwin, were interested in the

possible manufacture of “good air,” which would result in a “healthy country” both physically

and politically.146 Dolan indicates,

Despite the sympathies of radical chemists toward the two revolutions, American and

French, and the direct association that was made among them with their own chemical

revolution, it was, ironically, the Tories who seemed more intent to make the radical

political implications of chemistry appear a convincing threat than did the radical

chemists. (42)

While he does not consider The Economy of Vegetation, its final canto, especially, supports his

view that the desire for a chemical revolution was not a coded desire for civil strife but rather for

a greater civil harmony than had yet been struck. The canto helps to provide additional context

for Part II, in that it provides the general pattern into which the vignettes of vegetable love will

all fit (i.e., an ampler connection than the “slight festoon of ribbons” suggests). But it also

reinforces the view, despite the importance of all levels of reproduction, the intended impact of

science education on the body politic is limited to making it constitutionally healthier, more like

“the Rose, the towering Oak” (Darwin, Economy of Vegetation, 4.585), “the Grace and Guard of

Britain’s golden lands” (4.586).

The Muse and the Priestess of Nature

In The Temple of Nature, Darwin’s speaker depends on the “MUSE” (1.3) – here,

“Urania” (1.163)147 – for showing, first,

146 Brian Dolan, “Conservative Politicians, Radical Philosophers and the Aerial Remedy for the Diseases of Civilization,” History of the Human Sciences 15.2 (2002), 35. 224

how rose from elemental strife

Organic forms, and kindled into life;

How Love and Sympathy with potent charm

Warm the cold heart, the lifted hand disarm;

Allure with pleasures, and alarm with pains,

And bind Society in golden chains.

(1.3-8)

She will also aid him in the recital of “four past eventful ages” (1.9), and in giving “the fifth, new-born of Time, to light” (1.10), i.e., the future. The speaker calls on the “PRIESTESS OF

NATURE” (1.167) to “grant the MUSE” (1.173) access to her mysteries. The poem is focussed most closely on the “surviv[al]” of “Happiness” (4.452), throughout past history (factual and mythological), and ideally beyond the present. An epic simile imbues the project with the power to give life: as “IMMORTAL LOVE” (1.15) gave life to mankind, his poem will “soft-rolling

147 The speaker also names Urania at 4.470 and 4.517. See also John Milton, Paradise Lost, in John Milton: A Critical Edition of the Major Works, eds. Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). Urania is the goddess of astrology, but importantly, she is also Milton’s Muse in Paradise Lost. In Book I, he does not name her, but rather refers to her as the “heavenly muse” (Book 1, line 6). As the editors explain, Milton associates her with “the divine word” (853). She inspired “that shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed” (1.8), i.e., she inspired Moses. In Book VII, Milton addresses Urania by her name (7.1). The editors indicate that he is using her “in a more literal sense” (894), because “the name means ‘heavenly,’ from Greek ouranos, the sky, and Milton invokes ‘The meaning, not the name’ [in Book 7, line 5]” (894). “Heavenly” is amenable to a Christian interpretation; her “voice divine” (7.2) is what he seeks. While Milton seems to question whether “Urania” really is – or, should be – her name (7.1-2), he lets her keep it. It makes sense that a poet writing about creation post-Milton would have invoked Urania. For Darwin – writing about the origins of the universe after Lucretius and Milton – it was also sensible. Urania is like a palimpsest, but her multiple inscriptions are still legible. The Miltonic sense predominates, but her pre-Christian significance remains. Alongside other pagan myths, her duality is more apparent.

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eyes engage/ And snow-white fingers turn the volant page;/ The smiles of Beauty all my toils

repay,/ And youths and virgins chant the living lay”(1.29-32).The idea that it is in the turning of

pages that a written record has the character of a living lay – in motion itself as well as

representing human activity as it is happening – is reinforced by a representation of Time and

Proteus, both constrained to tell the story of life:

TIME reclines, by Sculpture bound;

And sternly bending o’er a scroll unroll’d,

Inscribes the future with his style of gold.

— So erst, when PROTEUS on the briny shore,

New forms assum’d of eagle, pard, or boar;

The wise ATRIDES bound in sea-weed thongs

The changeful god amid his scaly throngs;

Till in deep tones his opening lips at last

Reluctant told the future and the past.

(1.79-88)

While natural processes are cyclic, life forms are “changeful” (1.225), “improv[ing]” (1.225)

“from embryon births” (1.225), both “growing, as they live” (1.225), and also “strengthen[ing] as

they move” (1.225). While every individual life ends, society remains. In Canto II: Reproduction

of Life, Darwin’s speaker complains, “How short the span of LIFE!,” noting below the verse that

this problem is man-made, an unintended consequence of “civil society” (2.1, n. 2.1) The

“cultivat[ion] of science” and the “improve[ment] of [the] intellect” tend to promote longevity,

but the lives of “the thinking few” are still too short to make major advances (Darwin n. 2.1).

Hence the promotion of sexual “REPRODUCTION” (2.13), from a mere material, sexual

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process to the “renascen[ce] of Youth” (2.15) in a “vital chain” (2.19), “the long line of Being”

(2.20). Because of sexual reproduction, mankind is able to survive. With the accumulation of

knowledge, mankind is able to make collective progress over time.

Darwin’s representation of a positive maternal nature (the Priestess of Nature) is at odds

with Lucretian didactic epic, and also ostensibly with his earlier verse. However, his engagement

with erotic satire in The Loves of the Plants and, to a lesser extent, The Economy of Vegetation

enables him to challenge – subtly rather than in an authoritarian manner – notions that because

the sexual system provides a material explanation for the reproduction of life forms, it tacitly justifies licentious human sexual behaviour.

Darwin’s Mimicry and Manipulation of Erotic Satire

Most critics refer to the individually published versions of the Arbor Vitae. I have opted

instead to refer to them as they appear in The Ladies Delight. The prose version of Arbor Vitae

was originally published by J. Wilkinson on 13 June 1732; a piracy was published by John

Brindley on the 14th of the month; the second, “genuine,” edition of the “merry alegorico-

botanico-badinical piece” followed on the 23rd; and the reprint in 1741 (Spedding, 2-3). The

poetic version was published on 17 June 1732 (Spedding, 2-3). The collection The Ladies

Delight was published by (the possibly fictitious) “W. James in the Strand,” on 20 June 1732;

second and third editions followed later in the year (Spedding, 2-3). Another erotic text, Frutex

Vulvaria, was also published by W. James in the Strand (The Ladies Delight), and the idea of the

Frutex Vulvaria receives some attention in The Ladies Delight (as we will read later). Karen

Harvey attributes both versions of the Arbor Vitae and Frutex Vulvaria to Thomas Stretser. In

contrast, Spedding disputes the original attribution, considers the author of the poetic version of

Arbor Vitae as unknown, and considers the author of the prose version and Frutex Vulvaria as,

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possibly, the same unknown person. The authorship of the “Address” and “Ridotto al’Fresco” is

simply unknown. The Ladies Delight includes four parts:

I. An Address to all well provided HIBERNIANS.

II. The ARBOR VITAE; or, Tree of Life. A Poem. Shewing whence it took it’s [sic]

Root, and has spread its leaves all over Christendom; being extremely useful to Students

in all Branches of polite Literature.

III. The Natural History of the ARBOR VITAE; or, The Tree of Life, in Prose; printed

from the Original Manuscript.

IV. RIDOTTO al’FRESCO. A Poem. Describing the Growth of this Tree in the famous

Spring Gardens at Vaux-hall, under the Care of that ingenious Botanist Doctor H — GG

— R.148

That The Ladies Delight includes both versions of Arbor Vitae suggests that they were regarded

as some kind of set. The re-ordering – placing them in reverse order of their original publication

(i.e., the poem before the prose) – may have served in some way to upset normal reading order of

the set, or it may have reflected how they were typically read, whether this was because of

differing degrees of popularity, or whether some other reason.

In some sense, Darwin parallels that four-part progression in his poems. Like The Ladies

Delight, The Loves of the Plants includes several prose apparatuses as well as verse. Many of the

apparatuses serve to explain the botany behind the verses. The Interludes deal with the art of

poetic creation, and serve as a reminder that a poem is at best like a camera obscura, which

148 Anonymous, The Ladies Delight, in The Geography and Natural History of Mid- Eighteenth-Century Erotica, vol. 3 of Eighteenth-century British Erotica, ed. Patrick Spedding (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2002), 3. Parenthetical references distinguish between the components of The Ladies Delight, e.g., “Ladies Delight, ‘Arbor Vitae,’ poem, pp.” or “Ladies Delight, ‘Arbor Vitae,’ prose, pp.” 228 represents scenes as they appear in a certain circumstance, and which may or may not represent them as they are; this elevates the importance of the notes. With the appearance of the full

Botanic Garden, Part II takes its place as such, and becomes secondary to the purpose of

“deliver[ing]” “the physiology of plants,” and “the operation of the Elements, as far as they may be supposed to affect the growth of vegetables” (Darwin, Economy of Vegetation, v). Because of the early publication of Part II, readers were prepared not only to understand Part I, but also to maintain some scepticism about the scenes that they were about to observe, and to pay close attention to the wealth of scientific and literary notes. Following the hefty Part I, Part II provides a welcome levity. Finally, The Temple of Nature shows where this has all been tending: that is, the satire of human behaviour which runs counter to accepted standards of good taste.

“Arbor vitae” is translated as “the Tree of Life.” All of “Arbor vitae,” “Tree of Life,” and

“The Ladies Delight” represent the male member metaphorically. The use of “The Ladies

Delight” as a title shifts over the course of the century: “During the Restoration and early in the century, [The Ladies Delight] designates collections designed to seduce women; toward the end of the century, it designates those designed to instruct women in virtue” (Mandell 27). The

Ladies Delight (1732), then, by its very title, signals the kind of reading material it will proceed to satirise: illicit texts for the female reader, by the male author. As one reads a bit further, the implication that botany has no higher purpose than seducing women becomes apparent. While the title indicates a female readership, the address indicates a male one. There are two implications. The first is that male readers must have had foreknowledge: otherwise, the title should have acted as a disincentive. The second is that female readers probably did not: after all, they like romances; surely it is an exceptional woman who bothers with satire. Such imaginings provide any reader with an initial sense of self-satisfaction which helps to ensure that he or she

229 will side with the satirist (even against him- or herself). In actuality, the two main texts had already been published and were very popular (hence their inclusion in the collection), and so it is quite likely that readers were prepared for what lay before them. Eve’s body is encoded in

“whence it took its root, and has spread its leaves all over Christendom”; contemporary profligacy, in “the growth of this tree in the famous Spring Gardens at Vaux-Hall.” The reference to polite literature signals that what is to come is anything but (contributing nicely to the satire of botany as worthy reading material). Because of the Table of Contents, all readers have enough knowledge to arrive at the correct conclusion – whatever their meanderings along the way. The Address is from “Botanicus” (Ladies Delight, “Address,” 5). He distinguishes himself from “well provided Hibernians,” “men of less Parts, tho’ in Some Things more deserving, [who] are laugh’d at, and excluded all company” (5), and, perhaps, shouldn’t be (a temporary satiric shift-of-focus to the Tories). Through the Address, “Botanicus” becomes the implied speaker of both versions of Arbor Vitae and of “The Ridotto al’Fresco.”

The title “The Loves of the Plants, a Poem. With Philosophical Notes” affiliates the poem with erotic satire as well as The Essay on Man and De Rerum Natura. That plant life may be

“like” a romance may act as an incentive to the stereotypical female reader and to skeptical male ones. However, the prose apparatuses reflect Darwin’s interest in persuading all of his readers that there is no harm in representing the love life of plants, i.e., that there is nothing inherent in the Linnaean sexual metaphor that threatens good taste if one is in fact possessed of it to begin with. In “advis[ing]” (Darwin, Loves of the Plants v) and “appriz[ing]” (v) “The Reader, who wishes to become further acquainted with this delightful field of science [i.e., botany]” (v), that

“the works of the Great Master [Linnaeus]” (v) are most useful and that “a Society at

LICHFIELD” has “exactly and literally translated [them] into English” (v), he is not simply

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providing book information. His representation of a wish for fuller acquaintance with the

delightful field of Linnaean botany which can be set in motion by going to such-and-such a bookseller could just as well be about how to pursue a certain lady by stopping by at such-and-

such a place she is known to visit. (Undoubtedly more effort than simply turning up at the

specified location would be required in either case.) Darwin describes the Society’s translation of

The Families of Plants as “much wanted, not only by beginners, but by proficients in BOTANY”

(iv); this, too, is in line with erotic satire, insofar as it represents proficients in botany as lacking

perfect knowledge. However, the “trivial amusement” (vii) of the verses is soon revealed as

misdirection. The extensive footnotes provide the bases for the vegetable loves above, and

oftentimes involve cross-referencing among themselves and the translations of Linnaeus’ books.

The Ladies Delight employs botanical metaphors for human sexuality. Following the initial jests of “the ladies delight” and “well provided Hibernians,” the seemingly non-erotic contents of the collection take on a more clearly sexual dimension; mainly, one is willing to imagine that “spread its leaves” has a sexual connotation, and that the other texts will be likewise provocative. Generally, the Table of Contents is designed to resemble a list of botanical treatises:

“The Natural History of the Arbor Vitae,” “shewing” its origins and progress, and “describing the growth of this tree” in a specific place. However, the indirect reference to Lucretius through

“poem[s]” that “shew” and “describe” is likely to have been intentional, and gives pause for thought about what real subjects poetry were allowed to touch on, and how. Poetry had a perceived obligation to uphold popular morality (which is not the same as religion). Deism was widespread by the 1790s, in great part owing to Linnaean botany. But the sexual metaphor was ever regarded with suspicion: for it seemed to imply not only that that illicit sexual behaviour

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was natural, but also that it was therefore as good as any other kind (where nature’s laws were

the highest laws of the land).

Darwin could easily have written a botanical poem without reference to the most

controversial elements of Linnaean botany, i.e., the sexual metaphor and the sexualised terms for

plant parts (“stamen,” “pistil”). Instead he included both. As he explains,

Linneus [sic] has divided the vegetable world into 24 Classes; these classes into about

120 Orders; these Orders contain about 2000 Families, or Genera; and these Families

about 20, 000 Species; besides the innumerable varieties, which the accidents of climate,

or cultivation have added to these Species.

The Class are distinguished from each other in this ingenious system, by the number,

situation, adhesion, or reciprocal proportion of the males in each flower. The Orders, in

many of these Classes, are distinguished by the number, or other circumstances of the

females. The Families, or Genera, are characterized by the analogy of all the parts of the

flower or fructification. (Darwin, Loves of the Plants, i)

According to the sexual metaphor, “the parts of the flower or fructification” include “males” and

“females,” stamens and pistils, in relations that are strictly heterosexual, though not necessarily monogamous. The ability of different plants to interbreed depends upon a shared array of “all” parts. Darwin explains the sexual metaphor in further detail: Linnaeus “ingeniously imagines”

(v) that, as one man and one woman, Adam and Eve, are supposed to have been created in the beginning, so “one plant of each Natural Order was created in the beginning; and . . . the intermarriages of these Generic, or Family plants produced all the Species: and lastly . . . the intermarriages of the individuals of the Species produced the Varieties” (v). Darwin does tribute to the sexual metaphor in the poem in this way: “the number of the Class, or Order of each plant

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is printed in italics; as ‘Two brother swains.’ ‘One House contains them.’ and [sic] the word

‘secret.’ [sic] expresses the Class of Clandestine Marriage” (v). By reference to “the Class of

Clandestine Marriage,” Darwin maintains Linnaeus’ assumption that “male” and “female” parts are always present, even if they cannot be seen by the naked eye. The metaphor of marriage is of central importance to the poem: all of the plant relationships are represented as marriages

(however troubled). However, in the Interludes, the Poet defers to “the candid reader” (50), “the

candour of the critical reader” (88), and “hope[s]” for the “Good Humour” (132) of “the Ladies

and Gentleman” (132). By pandering to readers and asking for their good humour, he encourages

readers to think of themselves as knowledgeable, and the sexual system as a small matter rather

than as a sticking-point. Armed with candour, they can take it for what it is (a comparative way

of thinking) rather than for what it is not (a conduct manual).

The verse and prose versions of “Arbor Vitae” are largely identical in content. Men as

active lovers are addressed and satirised as “Botanists” (Ladies Delight, “Arbor Vitae,” poem,

11, prose, 5); in this way their civic conduct is linked with their study of natural history. Aspects

of the man-plant are represented using “tuft of moss,” “filbeard” or “Fillbert-Tree,” “cherry” or

“May-Cherry, and “nutmegs” (see poem, 8-9, and prose, 2). As for the plant itself, it “is

produced in most countries” (prose, 3), including, of course, England (happily the exclusions go

unidentified). It is recommended as having a “mod’rate size” – except when “oft” it “rise[s],”

especially in “Kent” (poem, 9; prose, 3)! From Kent and this initial show of known capability,

the versions move to Ireland. There, “tho’ the soil is poor,” the plant “comes to far greater

dimensions” than even in Kent (poem, 9; prose, 3). Through denigration of Ireland’s expert

botanist-lovers and suggestion of their sometime removal to England, a preference and need for

moderate use by Englishmen is established. Like mimosa, Arbor Vitae is “a Tree right sensitive .

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. . / Tho’ as one shrinks and will not stand,/ This rises at a Lady’s Hand,” “rises . . . and extends itself” (poem 9; see also prose, 4). The (ostensibly) more romantic verse reads, this is what

“Ladies more than Lap-dogs love,” but also, significantly, “this touch’d, alone the Heart can move” (poem, 8). Touched on by Botanicus is an altogether different thing, a distasteful thing to the male reader; surely the heart continues beating regularly, is the implication. Botany and profligacy are to be rejected.

Arbor Vitae’s complement is “a neighbouring…flow’ring Shrub” the “Vulvaria” or “The

Frutex Vulvaria” (Ladies Delight, “Arbor Vitae,” poem, 9, 11; prose, p. 3). The prose goes on at greater length than the verse here: There is “the greatest Sympathy between this Tree and

Shrub,” “they are . . . of the same Genus, and do best in the same Bed: The Vulvaria itself, being indeed no other than a Female Arbor Vitae” (prose, 3), reflecting the Aristotelian view of sexual difference still current in the 1730s, and promoting heterosexual practice as “best.” With the prose following the verse, the tree and shrub as complementary entities is reinforced. There are reportedly two sorts of female shrub: “One helps, and to’ther spoils the Ground”; helping and hindering are the only attributed roles. The one is recommended as morally preferable to removing nutmegs (castration, with its concomitant of infertility) or grafting on medlar’s stock

(sodomy, represented as “unnatural”); as to the other, it may be found in especial abundance in the pleasure gardens “at Vaux-Hall and St. James’s too” (poem, 12; prose, 6). Whereas the verse pleads: The “venomous Vulvaria . . . /about the Tree so leap,/ That very few good Plants can

‘scape” (poem, 12), the prose admonishes: “The Tree itself has so much partaken of the Nature of the venomous Shrub that had hurt it, that itself has become venomous, and spread the Poison throughout the whole Plantation” (prose, 6). The only, and unlikely, expedient is seeking out “a pit,” a “hollow place” (poem, 11; prose, 5) and filling it. Ostensibly, The Ladies Delight

234 promotes reproduction as a moral act to be suffered rather than enjoyed. But it relies on erotic rather than intellectual force: This verse imperative creates interest in the prose:

when such a piece of ground you see,

If in the midst a Pit there be,

There plant it deep unto the Root,

And never fear – you’ll soon have Fruit.

(poem, 11)

In turn, the prose helps to strengthen the qualification through reference to overuse (“so much partaken”) and harm (by “the venomous Shrub that had hurt it”). This, and the republication of reiterative versions, seems to result in erotic material in excess of the instructive aim, and encourage in male and female readers the kind of sexual pleasure that it mocks as effeminate.

Presumably the metaphoric representation of sex will be enough to excite the female reader. As for the male reader, he is incited to seek out a good woman, however difficult it might be to find one. That provides a moral motive for reading the rest of the passage (i.e., to learn how and where such a woman might be found), but also a fantasy of repeated searches. But the eroticism of the text is not solely for its own sake; it serves in creating the impression that all botany is good for is fantasy. With that knowledge, one is free to enjoy it when and as one will, but also advised to do so within limits (of course, once advice is proffered, it can potentially be discarded). The final component of the collection, “The Ridotto al’Fresco,” represents the

Spring Gardens at Vauxhall. These are taken as Italianate, the “grotto” as a “patron of iniquity,” who “invite[s]” “the Cit, the Wit, the Rake, the Fool, the Knight” (Ladies Delight, “Ridotto al’Fresco,” 31). These invitees “grasp . . . the tree tho’ ‘tis Forbidden Fruit” (26). At the “roots”

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of these “Trees with kind refreshing shade,” “whores [are] made” (31), the sex of whom is only uncertainly woman.

The collection’s re-ordering of the Arbor Vitae texts has the following major effects: The weaker satire of the verse is reinforced by the stronger satire of the prose. More specifically, shared contents are reinforced through repetition; these include moral judgements as well as naughty bits. The repetition of erotic content in the verse provides a practical incentive to sexual behaviour: a sexual appetite, which seeks fulfilment in the real world. The text’s position on various illicit sexual practices is clear, so that the male reader is presumably more apt to choose a sexual partner quite carefully. The assumption is that (supposedly) illicit sexual desire can translate into normative heterosexual behaviour.

The Loves of the Plants never comments directly on the sexual behaviours of people; its

primary object-lesson is botany. The footnotes represent a multiplicity of sexualised plant styles.

For example, monogamous “Canna” (the “Cane, or Indian Reed”) consists of “one male and one

female [per] flower” (Darwin, Loves of the Plants n. 1.39). Polygamous “Callitriche” (“Fine-

Hair, Stargrass”) has “one male and two females” (n.1.45) per flower. “Mimosa,” “the sensitive plant” (n. 1.321), is also “polygamous” (n. 1.321). Polyandrous “Kleinhovia” “supports” the

“males” (n. 1.183). In polygamous/ polyandrous “Lychnis,” there are “ten males” in the flower of one plant, and “five females” (n. 1.108) in that of another. In fitting with the Linnaean sexual metaphor, Darwin’s representations are of fundamentally heterosexual unions: males in one flower are considered as “confederates” (n. 1.97), and those which are not involved in reproduction as “eunuchs” (n.l.65). Females “look . . . abroad for their distant husbands” (n.

1.108). Plants with non-visible parts are classified as “clandestine marriage[s]” (n. 1.349). The notes do not typically pass judgment on polygamous and polygamous/ polyandrous plant styles.

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The one exception is in instances of polyandry where the female dominates over the males: here,

the judgment is Linnaeus’ – Kleinhovia are classed as “Viragoes” (with reference to the female

part), or “feminine males” (with reference to the male parts). (n. 1.183) As Darwin’s friend Anna

Seward once said, “‘Only females as still believe the legend of their nursery, that children are

dug out of a parsley-bed,’ could possibly be unfit students of botany.”149 As Cook attests,

Darwin had to have been aware of the persistence of that kind of belief and its negative impact

on the reputation of botany, and he sought to address it in a constructive way. The relative

absence of judgment allows for the free contemplation of illicit sexuality, but only among those

who have a pre-conception that botany has to do with illicit sexuality, who hunt for an example where none is provided, and most importantly, who are willing to avow that they have succeeded.150 Plants do not have any notion of sexuality (licit or illicit), but people do. The

verses do the work of illustrating that what may be natural is not necessarily what is good (in the

sense of what is culturally sanctioned). As Darwin writes in the Proem, his “exhibit[ion]” is

meant to “amuse” by “beauty,” “graceful attitudes,” and “brilliancy of dress” (ix) – and not by

ugliness, ignobleness, and stages of undress. Looking to the verses, Kleinhovia appears as a

contradiction in terms: a “Gigantic Nymph” (1.183), with “grace and terror” (1.184), “the blush

of beauty” (1.185), and “nerves Herculean” (1.186), who “bears her trembling lovers in her

arms” (1.192). Mimosa is particularly noteworthy. In the corresponding note, Darwin provides

what erotic satire never provides: a straightforward account of the plant itself, without any sexual

149 Donna Landry, “Green Languages? Women Poets as Naturalists in 1653 and 1807,” Huntington Library Quarterly 63.4 (2000): 479. 150 Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook, “‘Perfect’ Flowers, Monstrous Women,” in Defects: Engendering the Modern Body, eds. Helen Elizabeth Deutsch and Felicity Nussbaum (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000).

237 innuendo whatsoever. He speculates about “the immediate cause of the collapsing of the sensitive plant, and describes an experiment in which he

kept a sensitive plant in a dark room till some hours after daybreak: it’s [sic] leaves and

leaf-stalks were collapsed as in its most profound sleep, and on exposing it to the light,

above twenty minutes passed before the plant was thoroughly awake and had quite

expanded itself. During the night the upper or smoother surfaces of the leaves are

appressed together; this would seem to shew that the office of this surface of the leaf was

to expose the fluids of the plant to the light as well as the air. (n. 1.321)

Darwin’s account of his experiment is not devoid of metaphor: he describes the plant as

“sleep[ing],” “awake,” self-“expand[ing].” He may have viewed these metaphors as having a basis in the reality of plant life; he thought it possible that plants had a limited kind of brain.

What is important is that the account is insusceptible of interpretation as a scandalous nocturnal liaison between man and so-called man-plant. Interestingly, in the verse, Darwin elects to represent Mimosa as female, and as an object for empathy:

Weak with nice sense, the chaste MIMOSA stands,

From each rude touch withdraws her timid hands;

Oft as light clouds o’er-pass the Summer glade,

Alarm’d she trembles at the moving shade;

And feels, alive through all her tender form,

The whisper’d murmurs of the gathering storm;

Shuts her sweet eye-lids to approaching night,

And hails with freshen’d charms the rising light.

Veil’d, with gay decency and modest pride,

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Slow to the mosque she moves, an eastern bride;

There her soft vows unceasing love record,

Queen of the bright seraglio of her Lord.—

(1.301-12)

Darwin’s representation contrasts nicely with other representations of it as male. “She” appears as “chaste,” as shrinking back “from each rude touch” (rather than exercising volition). She is as mindful of her “Lord” or husband-to-be as is proper (culturally speaking). But she senses “the whisper’d murmurs of the gathering storm”: she is to be taken to a “mosque,” to become “an eastern bride.” The representation simultaneously reinforces ideal femininity as desirable and worthy of protection. It also removes errant male behaviour to an exotic locale as one which is as subject to fearful interpretation as it is intriguing. If the reader chooses to interpret the vegetable affairs as thinly veiled human love affairs, they are put in mind of human concepts such as

“sense,” which is the product of complex associations.

The Natural History of the Frutex Vulvaria was published in 1732. The text is self-styled as “subjoin[ed]”151 to that of the Arbor Vitae (this is a sexual metaphor as well as “about” the nature of the relationship between the texts). Accordingly, the general structure of the texts is the same: there is a physical description, followed by an explanation of “The Name and Virtues.”

The text is addressed “to the two fair owners of the finest Vulvaria’s [sic] in the three

Kingdoms.” In the Preface, pseudonymous author “Philogynes Clitorides” explains,

Tho’ Great-Britain has never been destitute of the finest Shrubs in the universe, yet the

Trees that have been grafted upon them, for these two and twenty years last past, have so

151 Philogynes Clitorides [pseud.], The Natural History of the Frutex Vulvaria, or Flowering Shrub: As it is collected from the best Botanists both Ancient and Modern (London: Printed for W. James, in the Strand, 1732), 5. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale Document # CW109885445. ESTC # N004752. 239

far degenerated, that our Plants are held in the utmost contempt in all foreign Countries,

as fit only to be piss’d upon. The celebrated Mr. Voltaire is yet more severe upon us, and

will have them to have dwindled ever since the Restoration. (Frutex Vulvaria 3)

The representation of the “trees” of “Great-Britain,” and their “degenerat[ion]” “since the

Restoration,” links botany with politics. The Preface continues,

We have had several very glorious Trees in the Reign of Charles II and ‘twas owing to

the Virtue of those Noble Plants that we obtain’d the Habeas Corpus Act, and made such

Home Pushes for the Bill of Exclusion. (3)

The “trees” are members of the nobility. By referring to the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 and the

Exclusion Crisis of 1678-81, the speaker allies himself (provisionally) with the Whigs. The speaker credits “the Hanover Succession” (4) of 1701, through which an alternative to a Catholic heir was found, as the means by which “we obtained the glorious Act of Settlement” (4) and “our present safety” (4). Yet, he intones, the Act “made it impossible to hurt us, but by our own

Consent” (4), and “since the Peace of Utrecht” (4), which helped to end the War of Spanish

Succession and led to the Whig junta, “we have never done any great Feats, but seem to be damnably off our mettle” (4). The speaker enjoins,

How much then, beauteous Ladies, must the whole Nation be obliged to your

indefatigable Endeavours to restore their Vigour, by inoculating none but the finest Plants

upon your Flowering Shrubs, whose Shoots may promise sprightly generous Plants,

untainted with that baneful Corruption that has, of late years, overspread our finest

plantations? (4)

This lays the blame on women. It suggests their inability to be selective: their “indefatigable

Endeavours” are well in excess of a limited availability of “the finest Plants.” It also suggests the

240 effeminacy of many plants: they are “tainted with that baneful Corruption that has, of late years, overspread our finest plantations,” i.e., because of the ladies’ “indefatigable Endeavours.”

Looking to the text proper, the female and male plants are referred to as members of “the same genus,” and the Frutex Vulvaria as “no other than a Female Arbor Vitae” (6). Both are “of the sensitive Tribe [i.e., like Mimosa]” (8). The Frutex vulvaria “has a natural Fissura or Chink in the Middle, much like the Eye which we shall see in some Trees, which opens spontaneously when the Arbor Vitae is to be grafted upon it, and afterwards closes again of its own accord” (8).

The inferiority of the female plant is linked to this presumed inactivity in conception: It is

“impregnated solely by the Succus of the Arbor Vitae, without contributing any Juice thereto itself,” it “of itself bears no Fruit” (8). The male plant “is valued the more, the larger it is in

Size,” and the female plant “that is least is most esteem’d; . . . indeed those that are above five inches in Diameter are worth little or nothing” (7). In other words, the less one inoculates on the other, the better. Yet the female plant is susceptible of an overactive appetite: “The owner” can

“[find] out the secret to make it open as naturally for the introducing a Rabbit [as in the case of one Mary Toft in 1726], as it generally does for the Inoculation of the Arbor Vitae” (10). The female plant is subject to two “Disorder[s]”: One is menstruation, “proof of the Shrub’s being capable of bearing”; the other, “not unlike the Melancholia Mulierum, or Furor Uterinus,” is “a continual Opening of the Fissura, or Chink” (13-14). The second disease runs rampant in the

“Hot-House,” “Drury,” “St. James’s and Westminster,” “that celebrated Female Botanist Mother

Needham,” “St. George’s Fields, Vaux-Hall, Lambeth, &c. nor are they wanting near the Bath,

Tunbridge, or Epsom” (14-15). Female “symptoms” are “as many, and more,” “are more difficult to be remedied,” and engender male symptoms: “for one Shrub that the Tree can hurt, the Shrub, when infected, may spoil twenty Trees” (11).

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James Perry’s Mimosa is “dedicated to Mr. Banks, and Addressed to Kitt Frederick,

Dutchess of Queensbury, Elect.”152 The text places a strong emphasis on effeminate male sexuality. In the “Dedication,” Perry writes of specimens of “the SENSITIVE PLANT” that

“though they are at times but roughly treated in the infancy of their propogation, yet when grown up, vigorous and erect, they are held in the highest estimation; and Queen Oberea, as well as her enamoured subjects, feel the most sensible delight in handling, exercising, and proving its virtues” (Mimosa, 110). “Rough . . . treat[ment]” represents self masturbation through the metaphor of vegetative “propagation,” in which such methods as division and grafting involve some destruction to the original plant or plants. Similarly, female “handling, exercising, and proving” represent mutual masturbation, sexual congress, and orgasm through that of the study of a plant’s “virtues,” in which it is manipulated and may also be dissected to reveal its physical attributes. Perry represents Mr. Banks, as “a Gentleman so deeply skilled in the science of

Botany” (110), as having skills that are simultaneously juvenile and effeminate. For he has

“laboured day and night, in ascertaining [Mimosa’s] qualities, in the hope that repeated experiments would discover to [him] the cause, why its property of receding should become

more quick, its sensibility more apparent, and its movements more delicate: in proportion to the number of experiments that are made upon it” (111). “Labour[ing] day and night” over the plant metaphorises self-masturbation, and frequent self-masturbation. Multiple “experiments” result in the plant’s “proportion[ally]” diminished ability to reach its full potential, but notably not in the

“discover[y] [of] the cause.” Banks has also reportedly “penetrat[ed] the deepest recesses” frequently: as Perry asks, “have you not bled in your endeavours to give them [female

152 James Perry, Mimosa: or, The Sensitive Plant (London: printed for W. Sandwich, 1779), in Grant, Flora, 109.

242 botanisers] to feel and to experience the qualities of the plant?” (111) Perry gives Banks false praise: “I need not say with how much zeal you have studied the natural history of the Mimosa; since you have all along acknowledged, it was the only part of your studies that requited you for your pains” (111). Here, the dual meaning of “part” delimits Banks’ successful “studies” to the study of Mimosa; and likens the study of Mimosa to sexual gratification. While Bank’s

“penetrating the deepest recesses” metaphorises sexual congress with women through the rooting of the plant in the ground, it also associates him with the female botaniser through reference to the physical examination of a plant. Both suggest Banks’ effeminacy, which Perry further represents as “shar[ing] in their [female] transports” (111). Banks may be an expert on a single plant, but Perry advises him that “there is hardly a girl of sixteen, who could not converse with you on the varieties of [Mimosa], that she within her narrow circle of knowledge, has had opportunities to discover” (112) – that is, within her social circle, and within her very anatomy.

Perry represents female profligacy thus: “Never was the soil in this country, so richly cultivated, so much improved, and so well prepared for the receiving engendering [sic], feeding, and rearing the Mimosa, as at present” (113). This has created “a double anxiety among all ranks and sexes, to become acquainted with its amazing qualities” (114). Perry “confess[es] that [he] is no enemy to the improvement we have made, in trying [Mimosa’s] virtues by frequent transplantations” (113).

The poem opens, “O THOU! who hast, so often proved/ The virtues of the plant, beloved,

– / That from the touch recedes. –” (Mimosa, 1-3). While the title page identifies the addressee as the Dutchess of Queensbury, Elect,” because of the nature of Perry’s Dedication to Banks, this knowledgeable “thou” reads somewhat sexually ambiguously. The speaker calls on his addressee to “assist” in the “display” of the “magic” (4) of Mimosa,

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For thou hast felt it every way,

And know’st how it suc-ceeds.

Eager, all things on earth to try,

This plant could not escape thy eye.

So stately doth it stand.

At thy approach, it rears its head,

Flushes, as ‘twere, a kindly red,

And courts thy lovely hand.

(5-12)

Thus far, there is little to exclude Banks from consideration: “this plant could not escape [the]

eye” of its owner, and who else could have “felt it in every way” conceivable? “Thy lovely

hand,” though, anticipates a more distinctively feminine addressee in the second verse. Mimosa,

Enamour’d of your melting eye,

. . . grows more stiff, erect, and high,

As you approach the place.

You feel the thrill in every part;

It sends the tremor to your heart,

And shrinks before your face.

(13-18)

To have a “melting eye,” “feel the thrill,” and have “heart . . . tremor[s]”signal a feminine (not necessarily gender-specific) response to amorousness. Reference to “feel[ing] the thrill in every part” is suggestive not only of the identified “heart” and “face” but also of a sex organ that is separate (which is not to say physically different) from that which is “approached.” “Shrinks

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before your face” suggests a second person whose role it is to perform oral sex, and may play on

the earlier seeming error of “suc-ceeds.” The pun re-appears elsewhere in the poem:

That sort, in England best suc-ceed,

And bear the largest share of seed,

Which come t’us from abroad:

This, all the ladies understand,

And say, they came from that dear land;

That harbours not a toad.

(223-28)

“That sort,” “which come t’us from abroad,” from a “land” that is “dear” to “all the ladies,”

implies the French – and possibly those who have some fellow feeling for the French. For both they and all the ladies prefer “True English growth to prize” (232).

The plant is apparently “so genial . . . , and kind/ [That] to no one’s garden ‘tis confin’d;/

But grows and blooms in common” (Mimosa, 259-61). More specifically, “To rich and poor; to high, and low,/ Doth this sweet plant in common grow;/ To prince, as well as peasant” (283-85).

The speaker jests, “As natural to man is this,/ As liberty to Britain is,/ Or beauty to a woman”

(262-64). His concern is with the elimination of hierarchies between “rich and poor,” “high, and low,” and “prince, as well as peasant,” for this potentially compromises high-minded notions of political liberty and female beauty. As if he were one of the sort he has depicted, he asks,

What if no proof of this we view,

And if there did no ill ensue,

To fair-one, or to lover?

There may be causes which we could,

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Without much danger, if we would,

To all the world discover.

(289-94)

In other words, if there were no proof of rampant unselective sex, and if there were no ill to be

remarked upon, then there may be natural causes which could be discovered to all the world

openly, without any risk to English society.

The idea of effeminacy is never addressed directly in The Loves of the Plants but it plays a

role in the interpretation of the poem by its readers. Because of the Gentle Reader – characterised

as ingenious, providing a background in Linnaean botany and resources for further study,

representing the verses as a trivial amusement, and calling for candour – female and male readers

alike are encouraged to look to the footnotes and beyond for the bases of Darwin’s observations

of plants. These observations are subject to scrutiny through the lenses of experience and

repeated experiments. Women are thus encouraged to be better than the stereotypical female

reader. As for men, to take the verses as a model for human behaviour (whether as one that is

intended to be followed or whether as one to take a secret pleasure in) would be effeminate. To

take them lightly appears not only as the manly thing to do, but also as the human thing to do.

Darwin’s “Gentle Reader” for his poetry is not reliably male or female, but rather connotes

anyone who has had a good education, and is therefore sensible of observable phenomena and

able to make reasoned judgments on their basis. Implicit in The Loves of the Plants is the idea

that men have something to learn from supposedly female, effeminate, reading – that is, from

poetry and Linnaeus’ sexual system of botany – and perhaps from women themselves.

That laid the groundwork for Darwin’s representations of “female Nature,” and femininity, in The Temple of Nature. In closing, I would like to focus on Cantos III and IV. In these cantos,

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Darwin’s Deistic Dissent and didactic epic message about the importance of female education

and the value of art and science to society come together powerfully. In Canto III: The Progress

of the Mind, Darwin’s speaker frames a conversation between the Muse (Urania) and the

Priestess of Nature. Urania’s “wish” (3.36) is “ardent” (3.36), but in a rational rather than a

sensual sense. She is not content with knowing about the production and reproduction of life.

Rather, she wants to understand the “Progress of the Mind,” in a world which the preceding cantos have depicted as dependent upon sensation and, more specifically and fundamentally, sex.

She exhorts,

‘Priestess of Nature! whose exploring sight

Pierces the realms of Chaos and of Night;

Of space unmeasured marks the first and last,

Of endless time the present, future, past;

Immortal Guide! O, now with accents kind

Give to my ear the progress of the Mind.

How loves, and tastes, and sympathies commence

From evanescent notices of sense?

How from the yielding touch and rolling eyes

The piles immense of human science rise —

With mind gigantic steps the puny Elf,

And weighs and measures all things but himself!’ (3.35-48).

In these lines, Darwin feminises and naturalises the deity as the Priestess of Nature, but attributes

to her the ability to “pierce” the realms of confusion and darkness, which later lines will reveal is

not necessarily a “masculine” ability, or always demonstrated by men. He also feminises and

247 naturalises the didactic epic invocation to a certain extent: the Muse wishes to understand how the human mind proceeds from sensation to association, and from loves, tastes, and sympathies, to scientific knowledge. That knowledge is not strictly feminine: it is simply “human.” The Muse conceives of man as a puny Elf, who nevertheless excels at the (Baconian) weighing and measuring of external things, yet excludes himself from the same kind of analysis. The Priestess of Nature – “the indulgent Beauty” (3.49) – gratifies the Muse’s request. Via the Muse, Darwin’s speaker presents the Priestess’ account of sensation, volition, time, association, and imitation.

According to the account, a “tender infant” (3.167) first encounters virtue through “its”

(3.176) mother; “its Mother’s breast (3.176) provides the first impression of “IDEAL BEAUTY”

(3.176). This image of child with mother provides the framing context for the “God of

SENTIMENTAL LOVE” (3.180), and for the relationship between “the enamour’d GOD”

(3.188) and “young DIONE” (3.188), in which he offers her “holy kisses” (3.195) and “Platonic arms” (3.196). Despite the apparent replacement of the Christian God with the pagan Eros that

“God of SENTIMENTAL LOVE” suggests, and the erotic implications of Eros’ enamoured feelings, “holy” and “Platonic” recommend an alternative view in which there is some common ground. The influence over women and society generally is depicted in unthreatening terms:

“o’er female hearts with chaste seduction [he] reigns,/ And binds Society in silken chains”

(3.205-06). As for “Man” (3.117), as “the young Reasoner” (3.120), he is born with two basic tools for discovery, “the hand, first gift of Heaven” (3.122), which allows for touch, and “the mute language of the touch” (3.144), which is sight. It is “Virtue” (3.160), however, “with raised eye and pointing finger” (3.161), who can lead him “to truths celestial, and immortal deeds”

(3.162). The mother-child experience reportedly colours every engagement with the world around him. In encounters with nature, he will note “the bending woodlands, or the winding

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shores” (3.208), “protuberance[s]” (3.209), “concave[s]” (3.210), and so on, i.e., reminiscences

of the female form and, more particularly, his mother. It seems that “The countless joys the

tender Mother pours/ Round the soft cradle of our infant hours,/ In lively trains of unextinct

delight/ Rise in our bosoms recognized by sight” (3.217-20). There is, then, a feminine

landscape, and the potential for domination and abuse. “Touch and sight” (3.283) lead to

“Volition” (3.73) and “potent acts” (3.435). Volitional acts “commence/ From clear ideas of the

tangent sense” (Darwin 3.73, 435, 423-24), and these are reportedly “from sires to sons by imitation taught” (Darwin 3.425). The volitional act of “IMITATION” (3.285), which “apes the outlines of external things” (3.284), “imparts/ All moral virtues, languages, and arts” (3.288). At the same time, the mother-child bond is supposed to teach infants to feel “sympathy” (3.243),

“pity” (3.244), and “enamoured sorrow” (3.245), and lead them to cultivate “TASTE” (3.246).

Although “REASON’S empire o’er the world presides” (3.401), and distinguishes “man

from brute” (3.402), it also “man from man divides” (3.402) at times. Imitation helps to harness

“the means of pleasure to secure the end” (3.435-36). As Darwin explains in his footnote, “the

ideas and actions of brutes, like those of children, are almost perpetually produced by their

present pleasures or their present pains; and they seldom busy themselves about the means of

procuring future bliss, or of avoiding future misery” (120). In contrast, “the acquiring of

languages, the making of tools, and the labouring for money” (120) – “and the praying to Deity”

(120) – are “characteristic of human nature” (120) as the “means to procure happiness” (120).

The power to procure happiness is what “marks mankind, and has given them the empire of the

world” (120). As means to that end, language, money, and prayer can all be used well or abused:

“Vice and Virtue court him [mankind] to their arms” (3.444). Prayer, for example, can be

“mercenary” (3.442) as well as innocent in intent. Darwin is implicitly placing the burden of

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religious squabbles on human motivation rather than particularly questions of which God or

which religion (if any) people choose to accept. “Observant Imitation” (3.461) – with “her quick

glance” (3.462) and “her hands” (3.462) – is moved by “soft emotions” (3.466) and a “feeling

mind” (3.466). It is for her sake that “SYMPATHY” (3.467) – in the form of a Seraph” (3.467) –

from Heaven descends,/ And bright o’er earth his beamy forehead bends” (3.467-68). These two

traits – which each “young [male] Reasoner” possesses, as influenced by his mother – should

combine to promote “universal love” (3.478). As for science, “All human science worth the

name imparts,/ And builds on Nature’s base the works of Arts” (3.409-10). At its best, it is not a

separate entity, but a kind of art itself.

In Canto IV, “Of Good and Evil,” Urania mourns the state of present society:

‘HOW FEW,’ the MUSE in plaintive accents cries,

And mingles with her words pathetic sighs.—

‘How few, alas! in Nature’s wide domains

The sacred charm of SYMPATHY restrains!

Uncheck’d desires from appetite commence,

And pure reflection leads to selfish sense!

(4.1-6)

Subsequently, she remarks ruefully upon “the changeful state of sublunary things” (4. 124) and

the prevalence of “sentimental pain” (4.130). Dejected, she wonders, “—Ah where can

Sympathy reflecting find/ One bright idea to console the mind?/ One ray of light in this terene

abode/ To prove to Man the Goodness of his God?” (4.131-34). This would be the perfect opportunity for Darwin to undermine Christianity. Instead, both he and the “Nymph” (4.135)

250 step in textually to qualify her assessment. In Darwin’s note to line 130 and “sentimental pain,” he writes that

children should be taught in their early education to feel for all the remediable evils,

which they observe in others; but they should at the same time be taught sufficient

firmness of mind not intirely to destroy their own happiness by their sympathizing with

too great sensibility with the numerous irremediable evils, which exist in the present state

of the world: as by indulging that kind of melancholy they decrease the sum total of

public happiness; which is so far rather reprehensible than commendable. See Plan for

Female Education by Dr. Darwin, Johnson, London, Sect. XVII. (140-41)

In the note, Darwin acknowledges that there are many evils, and also many irremediable ones.

What can be done, as he makes explicit, is teaching children to think in terms of the sum total of public happiness, a conception of the collective good. The reference to his Plan for Female

Education (1797) – a prose treatise for the use of female teachers in female boarding schools – indicates that girls as well as boys must learn this lesson, and also the rationale for it, as they will one day have children of their own to nurture. Although Darwin does not represent education for women as important in and of itself in his poetry, his interest is respectful, and his emphasis on the social importance of women puts him in line with (for example) the object of Polwhele’s disdain, Mary Wollstonecraft.

The Priestess reprises Urania: “She loads the scale in melancholy mood,/ Presents the evil, but forgets the good” (4.139-40). The good is that in this changed world – in which it is unclear if God or nature, or science or art, will prevail – is that life is still “brighten[ed] with sentiment and taste” (4.190). “SENSATION” (4.183) “presides” (4.191) “o’er the level and the rule”

(4.191), as well as “guides” (4.192) “the painter’s brush, the sculptor’s chisel [sic]” (4.192), and

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“lights” (4.193) “the poet’s fire” (4.193), which “tunes the rude pipe, or strings the heroic lyre”

(4.194). Sensation is, then, the pre-condition of all of man’s works. Hence

Thy acts, VOLITION, to the world impart

The plans of Science with the works of art;

Give to proud Reason her comparing power,

Warm every clime, and brighten every hour.

In Life’s first cradle, ere the dawn began

Of young Society to polish man;

The staff that propp’d him, and the bow that arm’d,

The boat that bore him, and the shed that warm’d,

Fire, raiment, food, the ploughshare, and the sword,

Arose, VOLITION, at thy plastic word.

(4.223-24)

Prior to “Society” as such, volition enabled mankind to find the means for sustaining itself. Over time, the “staff,” “bow,” “boat,” etc., were replaced with art and science. Language is “plastic” – meaning, changeable – and “The Muse historic hence in every age/ Gives to the world her interesting page” (4.302). It was, nonetheless, volition’s word that led “NEWTON” (4.243),

“HERSCHEL” (4.237), “ARCHIMEDES” (4.242), “SAVERY” (4.249), and “ARKWRIGHT”

(4. 261) to their discoveries, just as it was volition’s word that led man to devise the staff, generate fire, fashion clothing, and so on. Darwin is representing science and art as arming reason with the power of comparative thinking. That is not, however, to say that science replaces art: he credits “the immortal Press” (4.270) with both nursing “the births of science” (4.271) and protecting the “rising Arts” (4.272) from “the wrecks of Time” (4.272). The relationship between

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science and art that he represents is one in which the process of comparison tends to improve

both of them. It is also not to say that Nature replaces God. As the line about “the interesting

page” seems to suggest, Darwin is keenly aware that history is constantly in the making, and that

tomorrow’s ideas will demand further comparative thinking. He avows that the press has had a

significant impact on “superstition” (151). More specifically, he attests that, because of the press,

superstition “has been much lessened by the reformation of religion” (151). With this line, he

comes as close as he ever will to acknowledging that his involvement with the Joseph Johnson

circle includes him in such a project of reform (not repudiation), or that further work remains to

be done. In his view, “the liberty of the press” (151) is what will prevent his “part of the world”

(151) from “sink[ing] into . . . abject slavery” (151). Equally importantly to his conception of

public happiness, though, it will also help to foster “peace” (4.285), not war. The specific

example that he provides – “rival realms with blood unsated wage/ Wide-wasting war with fell

demoniac rage” (4.279-80) – refers to France and England.

Darwin represents an “Almighty Will” (4.344): a first cause with volition, “whose hand unseen the works of nature dooms by laws unknown – WHO GIVES, AND WHO RESUMES”

(4.346), i.e., through the operations of nature. He also represents “NATURE’S LORD!” as “he” who “with hand unseen directs the general cause/ By firm immutable immortal laws” (4.461-62), again emphasising material regeneration. His conception of a God who does not otherwise interfere in earthly matters is unashamedly Deistic. The previously depressed Urania – struggling with two truths – makes her way “slow[ly] to the altar” (4.170). When she arrives, she “lifts her ecstatic eyes to “TRUTH DIVINE” (4.524). For her, there is no immediate conflict between

Nature and the existence of God. On Darwin’s interesting page, the two are one.

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Chapter 6

Conclusion

As I proposed in Chapter 1, this dissertation pursues two related aims. The first has been to

deal with what I regard as the dominant issues in Darwin criticism: his personal beliefs, their

impact on his poetic purpose, and how that along with his interest in promoting science appears

to damage his ability to conform to the requirements of various genres with which his poems

have resemblances. In addition to engaging with Darwin criticism itself, I brought in period-

specific responses to Darwin’s poetry and multiple bodies of criticism. In the course of engaging

with the material, I represented Darwin’s poetry as that of a Deistic Dissenter in the 1790s, as

modified Lucretian didactic epic, as involved with the traditions of eighteenth-century didactic

poetry, and as using rhetorical strategies from Dissent and Deism and elements of erotic satire.

The second aim was to support my claims in those chapters through close reading of Darwin’s

poems.

Chapter 2 is premised on Darwin criticism’s emphasis on his limited or non-existent religious beliefs rather than on his religious affiliations as a determining factor of his poetic purpose. With reference to commentary on Darwin’s poetry by Coleridge and Wordsworth, I showed that both took issue with his poetry because it was, apparently, irreligious: this helps to explain and justify what Darwin criticism does, to a point – though, as I discussed, Coleridge’s assertion that he is nauseated by Darwin’s poetry tends to be remembered out of context and at face value. Because Coleridge implicitly links Darwin with Radical Dissent by deeming him one of the atheistic brethren of his addressee Thelwall, and using Michaelson’s criterion of community of belief, I represented Darwin as a Deistic Dissenter whose personal beliefs – which cannot be known with certainty – should be set aside. I gave a historical overview of Deism and

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Dissent; where they overlapped and diverged as systems of belief; their mutual struggle for

freedom and tolerance; their mutual involvement in science; Joseph Johnson’s circle of writers,

including Darwin; and alarmism over the preceding in the context of the French Revolution.

Darwin’s interests lead back to the community of Dissent in which he was raised: his study and

adoption of Deism, his scientific activities, his didactic intent. With his poetry, he became a

member in Johnson’s circle of writers, a specific community of Dissent, with the same basic

interests: theology, science, education. My claim at the end of the chapter was that Darwin’s

poetry was likely involved with the written traditions of Deism and Dissent.

Chapter 3 deals specifically with Darwin criticism that centres on Darwin’s apparent genre

– because this is what typically has the greatest impact on poetic purpose – and beliefs. With

reference to two parodies of Darwin’s poetry, “The Loves of the Triangles” and The Golden Age,

I showed that these took umbrage with the apparent political implications of what he had written.

Darwin’s poetry seemed revolutionary in the political rather than literary sense of the word, and

yet “The Loves of the Triangles” supplies a literary genre for exactly that kind of verse: didactic

poetry. In my discussion of Darwin criticism, I showed where and how the issue of Darwin’s didacticism arises, showing that Lucretius emerges as a possible role model for Darwin as an atheist. My claim was that De Rerum Natura provided Darwin with the genre of Lucretian didactic epic, but we still need to consider Darwin’s poetry in connection with didactic poetry.

The argument of Chapter 4 is that The Loves of the Plants, The Economy of Vegetation,

and The Temple of Nature take the genre of Lucretian didactic epic as their basic model, and are

also involved in the tradition of eighteenth-century didactic poetry. I provided an explanation of

what De Rerum Natura is (a poem in the tradition of didactic epic), what it does (a form of

allegoresis that is also anti-epic and anti-literary), its accepted status as a genre of didactic epic,

255

its mutability as a genre, and its features. Focussing attention on Lucretius’ virtual atheism and

the generic feature of an explicit teacher-student address, I suggested that it would have been

necessary for Darwin to omit or modify these to suit his purposes and enhance his

persuasiveness. I introduced the rhetorical strategies of Dissent and Deism and the poetic

tradition of eighteenth-century erotic satire. My claim was that these were involved in the

changes that Darwin made to the intent and explicit teacher-student address of Lucretian didactic epic.

Chapter 5 demonstrates that Darwin’s three poems all use the general model and certain special features of Lucretius’ didactic epic De Rerum Natura, but that each of them is more complex than the last, having a higher didactic aim. I showed where and how Darwin uses techniques from the written traditions of Dissent and Deism, how those that he adopts impact on each other, and how they work together. Whereas Lucretius’ didactic intent was to promote

Epicureanism, the philosophy that Darwin promotes in his poetry is one of free enquiry and tolerance for differences of belief. His poems work together to reinterpret De Rerum Natura as a kind of poem, science and poetry as kinds of knowledge, and women as a kind of reader and social agent, and to represent God and Nature as potentially compatible ways of thinking about the first cause (for the time).

There is a high level of interest in Darwin’s poetry at the moment. Not since The Genius of

Erasmus Darwin – a collection of edited conference papers, edited by C. U. M. Smith and Robert

Arnott, and published in 2005 – has the interest come from so many directions, taken such different forms, and been so strong. In this dissertation, I have concentrated my efforts on redressing the key issues of Darwin’s beliefs and genre, showing the connections between his poetry and didactic epic, and exploring his poetic engagement with period-specific debates and

256 discussions about the importance and purpose of science and art, the value and societal role of female education, and the threat of atheism that Deist and Dissenter authors were thought to pose to the public. My hope is that this work will add to interest in his poetry from a literary perspective. I also hope that it will encourage outside interest in his representation of science and art as mutually, and vitally, important to the progress of knowledge and self-awareness.

My work lays the groundwork for further study in several areas. First and foremost, it will facilitate further literary analysis of Darwin’s poems in terms of generic mixing, with didactic epic as the primary genre. Another avenue is to examine texts that took The Botanic Garden as their (positive) inspiration. In light of Darwin’s interest in cultivating scientifically educated women, it would be especially interesting to analyse Maria Jackson’s Botanical Dialogues

(1797; a botany book for use by mothers and female governesses) and Charlotte Smith’s “Flora”

(1807; a poem that emulates Darwin’s general form of rhymed verse with philosophic notes) and to consider the ways in which their speakers conform with or challenge his vision. Darwin’s poetic representation of nature as ceaselessly self-regenerative – withstanding industrialist progress – and of human nature as pioneering – both scientifically and industrially – is susceptible of an eco-critical approach. A fourth possibility entails using the subject of the religious-political backlash against Darwin’s poetry as a framework for thinking about how current dialogues on religion versus science, and religion versus atheism, operate.

257

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Appendix 1: Use of Copyright Material

Title of Dissertation: Erasmus Darwin’s Deistic Dissent and Didactic Epic Poetry: Promoting

Science and Women’s Education Under the Banner of Tolerance

Author: Kirsten Anne Martin

Department and school: Department of English, Queen’s University (Kingston, ON)

Degree: PhD

I attest that I have been mindful of the intellectual property rights of the writers from whose works I have quoted or excerpted in this dissertation. In accordance with scholarly convention, and as appropriate, all sources receive full credit and citation. My use of copyright material is in accordance with the “fair dealing” provision for research and criticism. For that reason, I have not sought permissions.

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